FanHouse Nukeese Richardson

In February, Nu'Keese Richardson was one of the crown jewels in Lane Kiffin's first recruiting class at Tennessee.

Kiffin wooed the four-star recruit, a longtime Florida commit, away from Urban Meyer and then bragged about the recruiting victory at a UT recruiting breakfast. At the time Kiffin incorrectly argued that Meyer had committed a recruiting violation by contacting Nu'Keese during his visit to Tennessee.

From there Kiffin also engaged in a public feud with the head coach at Pahokee High School. Richardson was, in fact, the spark that turned Urban Meyer and Lane Kiffin's war of words into a conflagration. Richardson was the apostrophe that loosed a thousand ships, and now he's the apostrophe that will never play football again for the University of Tennessee. On Monday, Kiffin announced that both Richardson and fellow freshman recruit Mike Edwards have been permanently dismissed from the team.

"After extensive and thorough research of the situation over the last four days and considering various disciplinary options, I've decided it's in the best interest of our program to remove Nu'Keese and Mike," Kiffin said. "As I've said many times before, we hold our student-athletes to an extremely high standard on and off the field. Our student-athletes must be responsible members of society, and this type of conduct will not be tolerated.

It's really come to this.

Last week, a Florida high school principal, Ariel Alejo (like the Little Mermaid, how cute), refused to allow a Tennessee assistant coach to enter campus and extend a scholarship offer to one of his students. Why? Because he's still upset over comments Lane Kiffin made last February after signing another Pahokee student, Nu'Keese Richardson.

Why might Principal Alejo (right) be upset? I don't know, it could have something to do with the fact that his public profile page for Pahokee High School features a Florida Gator at the bottom [Now replaced with the Pahokee High seal. Alejo's e-mail address has also been removed.] Alongside this quote, "I would also like for every student to graduate and go to college." What needs to be added to the end of the quote is this, "Unless they go to Tennessee." No matter which school you support, I think we can all agree, this is ridiculous and colossal misplacement of school time, energy and focus.

Okay, Lane Kiffin actually said a lot more than that about Urban Meyer at a recent Tennessee "recruiting celebration banquet." In fact, Kiffin states that he is "gonna turn Florida in right here in front of [the crowd]" and then states that while Nu'Keese Richardson was on Tennessee's campus, Meyer was calling him (which Kiffin believed was a violation, apparently incorrectly so).

So, yes, this seems like a pretty monster way to fire up a rivalry that didn't really need any firing up. But not to close out on a "calm" note, Kiffin decided to bring the house down with "I love the fact that Urban had to cheat and still didn't get [Richardson]" before being drowned out by Volunteer fans cheering. (Watch the video from VolunteerTV after the jump, and you have to hit the volume button -- be careful, it's loud.)