Kiffin jokes about Tennessee's 'blame game'

Lane Kiffin has been absorbing blame for anything and everything wrong with the Volunteers since he left the school two years ago. He was apparently let off the hook in November, when Tennessee lost to Kentucky for the first time in 26 years. Following defeat, some Tennessee fans let Kiffin slide and passed the blame to current coach Derek Dooley, according to a story in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. "Are you sure I didn't get blamed for the Kentucky game?" Kiffin told the paper with a laugh. "I'm sure somebody somewhere blamed me for that. After we left two years ago, and I don't remember the timeline, there were some floods in Tennessee. So people around here were joking that was my fault -- that there were floods there." Kiffin, now the head coach for the University of Southern California Trojans, accepts whatever fan backlash comes his way. "It is what it is," he told the paper. "I still have a number of people I stay in contact with there at Tennessee. I know this: I did everything the right way there, as you can see what came out of the NCAA's investigation. The goal was to make Tennessee better every day. That's what we strived to do every day we were there ... to build confidence in our players and our fan base, and recruit really good players." Kiffin also spoke about his relationship with Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer, which had been frosty when the two both coached in the SEC. In 2009, Kiffin beat the then-Florida coach Meyer for a recruit and said, "I love the fact that Urban had to cheat and still didn't get him." He later apologized. "I'm glad Urban and I are where we are in our relationship," Kiffin said. "When you're young, you make some mistakes. We've moved forward from that. Who would've guessed we are back at battling each other for recruits even though we're a long ways away? I have tremendous respect for what Urban Meyer does.