FanHouse Lane Kiffin

In case you're wondering, here is the complete list of outrageous things Lane Kiffin has not done since becoming head coach at Tennessee:

1. Paint himself orange and skydive naked into Bryant-Denny Stadium.
2. Ask what Urban Meyer has done that's so great.
3. Consult with the UT astronomy department to see whether the universe would be annihilated if his ego was ever in the same room as Bruce Pearl's.
4. Coach in, and win, a football game.

For a moment, I had to cross off "make an outrageous scholarship offer to a middle schooler" because, well, there were reports that he just did that. Evan Berry, 13-year-old son of former Vol running back James Berry and brother of current Vol Eric Berry, has officially committed to the Vols. Or so said Rivals.com and ESPN, sort of.

Every Monday during college football's endless offseason, The FanHouse Walk will put last week's stories to bed and deliver the essentials to bridge that agonizing space between now and September.

If He Can Get On The Field, Play Ball -- It's come to this: the 13-year-old brother of Tennessee safety Eric Berry has pledged to play football for the Vols. Nevermind that he's not even in high school, but the kid's set on Orange and who is Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin to say no? The saving grace in all of this is that verbals are non-binding and four years is a lot of time to fill where both parties could easily part ways.

Last summer, the SEC signed a new $2.25 billion television rights deal with ESPN. The amount was staggering. ESPN is now on the hook for $150 million per year for the next 15 years. Now we know that every SEC football game will be televised on the network's broadcast partners, infinitely more basketball games will arrive on the network, and sundry lesser sports will also be featured.

It's a deal of tremendous implications that catapults SEC sports coverage into the realm of professional sports. What's been left unexamined is how this will change ESPN's news coverage of the league, and how that resulting coverage is going to make the SEC the de facto national college league of choice. Why? Because ESPN has spent so much money on the rights packages, the SEC has to be front and center.

Don't believe me? It's already happening.

When Houston Nutt signed 37 players to football scholarships at Ole Miss back in February, he knew several would not qualify academically. After all, the NCAA only allows a maximum of 25 scholarship players in any one recruiting class. Thus it was no surprise last week when SEC Commissioner Mike Slive told his coaches they would only be allowed to sign 28 prospects to letters of intent from now on.

This puts the Tennessee Volunteers in a bit of tight spot. The website Gridironstuds.com has counted up and found that Lane Kiffin (above) and his staff have already made scholarship offers to a few more prospects than that. And by "a few" I mean "a metric boatload." The Vols have 187 offers out there for the class of 2010.

Insert your own "doesn't Tennessee have a math department?" joke here. Kiffin went to Fresno State anyway. But what are the Vols going to do?

In the past few years, many colleges have begun to roll out all-day football camps for women. Sometimes these situations become borderline awkward, such as when hundreds of female Virginia Tech fans took photos of players as they flexed in their underwear. Nothing kills the fun of college athletics more than your wife coming home with pictures of your favorite players wearing nothing but compression shorts. Now Lane Kiffin and Tennessee are joining other SEC schools like South Carolina and Georgia which have been offering women this experience for several years.

Only they're rolling out the university's No. 1 starlet to open up the festivities ... Layla Kiffin.

It's been an eventful offseason for SEC football. The addition of Lane Kiffin to the coaching ranks gave the conference another huge name. Instead of taking his lumps at Tennessee after the disastrous end to the Phil Fulmer era, Kiffin came out swinging.

Not only did he and his staff work to sign a top-ten recruiting class, but Kiffin also managed to alienate virtually everyone outside of the Volunteers fan base.

The SEC coaches meetings rolled into Destin, Fla., this week, and Lane Kiffin washed ashore.

You know Kiffin, the man who brought a Molotov cocktail to the SEC tea party, the guy who coaches like tickets have to be sold for the latest WWE event. You halfway expect for him to enter press conferences wearing orange tights, grab the mike, scream invectives at his rivals, then spike the microphone, kiss his biceps, and leave without taking questions. Kiffin coaches college football like Vince McMahon helms the WWE, it's all about creating a buzz.

On Friday I sat down to do a radio show here in Nashville with my friend Chad Withrow. As we were going on the air, ESPN brought in a reporter to discuss a seismic story breaking in the college football universe on the televisions hanging above us. Tennessee was firing its strength and conditioning coach, Mark Smith.

Seriously, this was the story. We were about to go on the air in Nashville and we weren't going to lead with this story, but ESPN was. A year-round sport demands controversy, even if there's no real controversy.

If you've ever doubted how much the internet has changed college football, this was a tipping point of epic proportions.

What's your No. 1 fear if you subscribe to cable and you're a sports fan? Aside from the signal dying on the first day of the NCAA basketball tournament or on any Saturday or Sunday in the fall, it's that through no fault of your own you might not be able to watch your favorite teams play because of rights disputes between major companies.

We've seen it with the Big Ten Network and several cable companies, and we've seen it with the NFL Network and virtually every cable company. Nothing sucks more as a sports fan than being a paying subscriber, being willing to pay whatever you have to for the games you want to see, and still not being able to watch your favorite team play from the comfort of home. It's a constant dance between content providers and cable distributors over how much channels should cost, and fandom is the collateral damage.

The latest rights dispute that seemed likely was between ESPN and Comcast. Only it never materialized.

Tuesday, Lane Kiffin and the Tennessee Volunteers received a commitment from a high school defensive end named J.C. Copeland. "Kiffin" exulted via Twitter, "It's a beautiful day in Knoxville, Tennessee today. I was so excited to hear that J.C. Copeland committed to play for the Vols today!"

There's just one problem with this twit, er, tweet. You can't comment on a recruit by name until they've officially signed with your program. Oops.

Meet Twittergate. As a result of the Twitter post, the Vols have been forced to self-report a secondary violation to the NCAA.