Tommy Tuberville quips Lane Kiffin left Ole Miss ‘in a pine box’
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Tommy Tuberville is now in the political world, as a U.S. senator from Alabama, but not too long ago he was immersed in the politics of college football coaching.
And he drew from that crazy experience on Wednesday with a comment that harkened back to those coaching days at Ole Miss in 1998. He was the Rebels coach from 1995-98, but it was during what turned out to be his final season in Oxford when things got a little chaotic. Or maybe more than a little chaotic.
Speculation about Auburn having interest in Tuberville began to grow that year, and Tuberville felt the need to address the issue on his weekly radio show. It was on that show that he made this famous, or maybe infamous statement: “They’ll have to carry me out of here in a pine box.”
Just 2 days after that statement of loyalty, Tuberville took the Auburn job anyway, and he was the head coach on the Plains from 1999-2008.
Does this situation at all sound familiar?
Well, it should, because Lane Kiffin just went through a similarly dicey, controversial situation when he decided to up and leave from Ole Miss to coach at LSU.
Tuberville, following the Kiffin saga from a distance now, jokingly compared his situation to Kiffin’s in a comment from Washington.
“He left in a pine box like I did,” said Tuberville, according to a social media post by Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports.
Tuberville might be removed physically now from the college football coaching world, but Wednesday’s attempt at humor shows he still is dialed in to what’s happening down south in his old stomping grounds of the SEC.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
