Lane Kiffin Commits Recruiting Violation On Twitter, Universe Explodes

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.

Furthermore, Tennessee quickly whipped the public relations machine into fast gear, explaining that one of Kiffin's assistants was new and mistyped the message. Which is awesome, except that I got three e-mails from UT fans within the hour all pointing out that this message was an NCAA violation. So if your average fan can get the rule straight, why can't an employee? We're not asking someone to make plutonium from candle wax and a fishing lure, all we want is basic competency. All of this just provides further evidence for something I already knew, I hate Twitter. And so should you.

For the past couple of months you can't escape Twitter, it's everywhere. Especially as it pertains to sports. But I don't understand why. It makes no sense. Let me ask you this, when was the last time that a college coach merely doing something new got covered by the media? I mean that seriously. We were around when television began, but did newspapers all run articles about football and basketball coaches buying televisions? Did they feature quotes about how cool television was? "Today General Neyland watched television. He was fascinated by the moving images."

Radios?

Fielding Yost was moved by music appearing without the use of a piano or a gramophone. "It's like magic," Yost said, "magic music."

Honestly, I'm serious. I don't remember reading articles discussing coaches getting e-mail addresses so they could surf the information superhighway. I ask because all of these examples, televisions, radios, and e-mail addresses are much more culturally relevant than Twitter will ever be. Yet we've all heard a ton about Twitter and college athletics. Every single coach in America has had to answer questions about whether or not he has a Twitter account. I don't get it. It's like every single member of the mainstream media has stock options in Twitter and feels compelled to question coaches about it at every opportunity.

(I withdraw all criticisms if press conference briefings confirm that in 1994 every single college coach in America faced this question, "Have you been on the eBay, coach?")

Twitter is Friendster with a less cool name, digital graffiti with less staying power than gum on the undersides of desks. And now it's a new route to NCAA violations.

Shoot me now.

The only thing worse than a coach getting a secondary recruiting violation for using Twitter would be a coach getting a recruiting violation because someone else was pretending to be him on Twitter. Wait, that just happened? Well, at least the Twitter page must have been awesome, mentioning girls and alcohol and ... no. Your grandpa would be bored by the messages? Well, then, what's the point?

Truly.

Ninety-nine percent of the time you get lame, 140 character updates that let you know where someone is. I suppose that's amazingly valuable if you happen to be sitting at the airport, you think to yourself, I wonder if that's Lane Kiffin sitting across the aisle and then Kiffin tweets, "Sitting at Denver airport. Coffee's expensive, feet ache. Haven't read actual book since 1983. Urban Meyer has no chin!"

Only Kiffin wouldn't tweet this because he doesn't actually tweet. And if he did, this would be 10 billion percent more interesting than what a Kiffin stooge writes for him. Don't believe me? Read Lane Kiffin's Twitter page. It's everything that's wrong with the Twitter phenomenon. The NCAA rules violation post has now been removed, but since April 8, "Kiffin" has posted 20 times. Based on a quick review of these postings, we learn five things.

1. Kiffin is not actually doing the twits -- better name than tweet -- himself. This makes everyone who follows him niTwits. (Did you see what a clever play on words I did there? Bang, send me the Pulitzer.)

2. The majority of the tweets don't feature actual sentences. For example: "Out with the Big Orange Caravan in the Tri-Cities ... I hope we have a lot of Vol fans come out today! 10:36 AM May 4th"

Be honest, if someone sent you this e-mail, you'd block them from sending you any more e-mails, right? Yet put it on Twitter, attach it to a coaches' name who you've never met, and it's like Shakespeare reincarnated.

3. Kiffin has used exclamation points in 13 of his most recent 20 posts. That's more frequently than he's used periods to end sentences. I hate, hate, hate, exclamation points! They drive me insane! But even if you use exclamation points, can 65 percent of your comments really need them? Doesn't that mean that the majority of the things you write about are exclamations? My head is spinning!

4. Twitter makes the really exciting, (wow, football!) seem really boring. "Slow day in the office ... great time to watch some film ... 8:11 AM Apr 30th" I'm troubled by this, where's the exclamation? Is Lane Kiffin not excited about film? Shouldn't he be excited about film? How is it that Lane Kiffin can twit and make lawyers think their job doing document review for asbestos litigation is exciting?

5. Twitter makes cool guys seem lame. Don't you know that in the past six weeks Kiffin has done 15 billion things more awesome than anything you or I will do? Why does his Twitter feed read, "In meetings ... Getting ready for practice #11 this afternoon! Go Vols! 9:41 AM Apr 9th"

Look, I'm not meaning to pick on Kiffin. Most coaches are lame when it comes to Twitter. Just like most coaches would have been pretty lame if we'd suddenly insisted that they start raising program awareness on eBay. Everyone can picture Bobby Bowden walking into the office and saying, "Golly, I just don't know know why my autographed liver spot photos aren't selling for more."

Can we make it a rule that football and basketball coaches don't get asked about any new technology ever again? In the meantime, at least Twitter has made actual news, time for the NCAA rulebooks to get a 140 character review!