Official Site of the Southeastern Conference

COACH GENE CHIZIK

THE MODERATOR: Good morning, everyone. We are ready to begin our final day. We'll start off with Auburn head coach Gene Chizik. Welcome to Media Days, coach.

COACH CHIZIK: Thank you. It's obviously an honor and a blessing to be here today at my first SEC Media Day. I'm very honored to be representing Auburn University and Auburn football. It's been a whirlwind of seven plus months, starting back in mid December.

As we took the job in December, we started the recruiting trail after I assembled a coaching staff that I'm very proud of and very glad to have with me at Auburn. We hit the recruiting trail and signed a very good football class. After that, obviously we went into the normal things that you do when you're starting a program from the ground floor.

One of the first things we wanted to do was re recruit our own football team, which obviously we're on a daily basis still getting to know and to recruit every day. That's very important to us, to recruit and get to know our players we have on campus right now, including all of the freshmen that just got here a little less than a month ago.

But we started re recruiting our players. We started to get to know our players. We went into spring practice, really with not a lot of expectations, more just a lot of questions about our football team on both sides of the football, on our special teams.

Went through a very physical 15 days of practice. Was very productive on all sides of the ball. But went through our 15 days of very physical spring practice. Then kind of got into the spring recruiting. Went through our spring recruiting, and now have spent the summer game planning, doing the things that we need to do to prepare for the season.

Our football team has really worked this summer extremely hard. Obviously everything's on a voluntary basis. We've had great work ethic. Kids are really buying into what we're trying to do.

And so it's an exciting time for me personally here at Auburn. It's an exciting time for our fans. And it's gonna be kind of a new beginning.

We're excited about our coaching staff, as I mentioned earlier. We feel like we've assembled one of the best coaching staffs in the country, certainly in this league, that's what you have to do.

Again, with football being nine or ten days away from starting, we're excited about it. I'm excited to be back at Auburn. Obviously, this is my second go round at Auburn. The last time I was at Auburn, I was blessed to be a part of an undefeated football season in 2004. That's the last memory I have of Auburn. It's a great memory. We'd like to try to get it back to that point. We're excited about doing that.

Without any further ado, kind of open it up.

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. Given the expectations that are going to be placed on your program to win, do you feel pressure to kind of have to succeed immediately?

COACH CHIZIK: That's a great question. When you get into this profession, there's pressure everywhere. There's pressure from the fans. There's pressure from the media.

I don't think there's any more pressure put on Auburn football than what I put on our kids and myself. We don't really pay a whole lot of attention to all of the external issues out there. We put enough pressure on ourselves to be great.

Every one of our coaches want to be the best at their trade. I want to be the best at my trade. With that comes being self imposed pressure. So we set a foundation for what we want to do. That's our goal right now. We're setting a foundation for long term here at Auburn.

The pressure's gonna be there, no matter what school you're at. If you're in college football, that just comes with the territory. But certainly I don't feel like there's going to be any more pressure than what I put on myself to be great. And so, you know, that's kind of how we look at it.

Hey, this league is as good as it gets. It's the best in the country. Theres only 12. So in this league comes pressure, and it's just kind of part of the deal. I don't pay a whole lot of attention to it. It's probably more self imposed than anything.

Q. Could you disclose who you voted for for quarterback for all SEC?

COACH CHIZIK: I tell you, I don't like really discussing the issues of who we voted for, whether it be teams and people. However, I do understand that this has become a huge issue. I don't want to open myself up to answer every time somebody doesn't agree with who votes for who.

Tim Tebow is a great quarterback and I did vote for Tim Tebow. I certainly don't want to open myself up for discussion for here and ever more. Those things are confidential. As big of a deal as has been made of this, Tim Tebow is a great quarterback. He's one of the best in the country. Let's just leave it there.

Q. Can you talk about hiring Gus Malzahn, how that went, how you brought him on? Talk about your quarterback situation going into this season.

COACH CHIZIK: When Gus and I talked about coming to Auburn, I wanted to make sure philosophically we were on the same page. Being a defensive coordinator in this league and having a great grasp in this league what wins and what doesn't, I feel very strongly in the efforts of running the football. I get asked all the time about the spread offense.

My question back to the people who ask me about the spread offense is, Please tell me what kind of spread offense you're talking about because there's so many different variations about what people want to call the spread.

Gus and I had a lot of long conversations about philosophically about what we both believe in. If you go back and do your homework on Gus Malzahn, the numbers his offenses have put up over the years, if you just go back to the last two, I believe last year they averaged 270 yards rushing a game on the ground. Unless you're an option football team, that's really hard to do.

So we talked about philosophically what we want to do. We want to run the football, but we also want to be able to have a very balanced passing attack, too. Everybody wants to have a balanced attack. There are very few teams out there that throw it all the time or run it all the time. If you go back and look at the record, Gus has had a great, great record of being able to be balanced and productive both running and throwing.

So but we're on the same page. We know what we want to do. We want to create a physical brand of football, which over the years, that's what Auburn was built on. We were both on the very same page with what we wanted to do in that direction.

Our quarterback situation is gonna be very unique. There's a unique dynamic there. There's some older guys with experience. Some of them went through the spring. One of them didn't. Then all of a sudden, you have some young guys coming in on campus. When you haven't locked down on a position and said, This is my starter, that means it's up for grabs for everybody that walks through the doors.

We would like to get that situation resolved. How long that will take, we don't know. Obviously the guys that have more experience have probably a little bit of a leg up. But that doesn't always, you know, tell the final tale.

It will be interesting, but it's an interesting dynamic. It's going to take us a little bit of time to figure it out.

Q. Some of the Alabama people here have told me there's billboards up trying to whip up some interest in Auburn football, something they've never seen before, the people of Alabama. Do you sense or agree with this sense out there that Auburn football has stumbled a little bit and there's maybe a bit of a diminishment in its fervor and fan base?

COACH CHIZIK: To be honest with you, I don't really know what public opinion is. I don't know. Auburn is a great place. I can say that because I've been there and done that. Again, I don't know exactly how the outside world views Auburn. More specifically, Auburn football.

I know how our fans view it. I know how our coaches view it. I know how our administration views it. And we love Auburn. Everything we do will be in the direction of promoting Auburn University. So we're always gonna do what's in the best interest of Auburn. Whatever you see out there, it will be because we think it was in the best interest of promoting our university, both our university and football.

So the bottom line is, is we're very proud of Auburn, and so are the Auburn people. I'm not really sure exactly what the outside view is, other than those people, 'cause I don't come into a lot of contact with anybody other than that.

Q. You mentioned earlier you thought the SEC was the best conference in the country. Wonder why you say that. Your time in the Big 12, if you could compare the two conferences.

COACH CHIZIK: Two great conferences. I mean, arguably the two best in the country. I think time has proven that. I think the Big 12 has made leaps and bounds, since I spent the last four years, since I left the SEC, in the Big 12, I think I can speak a little bit intelligently about it because I've freshly been in both.

The Big 12 is leaps and bounds better than it was, let's say, five years ago, in my opinion, top to bottom. So I think it's made some significant strides in being able to claim it as one of the best conferences in the country. And it certainly is.

You know, who knows. This is one man's opinion. But the SEC, when you travel stadium to stadium, the passion, the pride, all of the things that go with, you know, what make college football great, there's no greater league, in my opinion, than the SEC. Talent wise, I mean, it's hard to argue the talent level in the SEC. That's standed [sic] the test of time. I don't think it's changed.

You got great players. You've got great coaches. And the interest, it's an all time high. If you sit here and you look and walk into this media day, it's my first one in the SEC, I think this is great validation. I think it validates the thought of why people think this is the best conference in the country. Look at the interest. I mean, when you walk through the doors, I think it speaks for itself.

Do I think this is the best conference in the country? I do. Do I think the Big 12 is a great conference? I do. But I can assure you I'm extremely happy to be back in this conference.

Q. What has it been like for you to meet the Auburn people? In June, you came and were greeted by 600 people at the banquet.

COACH CHIZIK: I feel like we have the greatest fans on the planet. I'm sure every head coach is going to stand up here and say the same about their institution as well. But, again, I'll go back to, I've lived Auburn for three years of my life, and the fans are just off the chart. Every place that I've gone, my staff and myself have been just welcomed with open arms. There's an excitement in the air. People want to continue on the great traditions that have been built way before me and will continue to go way after me.

But the welcome has been very warm and very exciting from our people. Our fans have been through a lot. Auburn people are very resilient. They always come back. But it's been overwhelmingly positive. My staff and I both feel that way no matter where we've been. They've been great. It's been fun.

Q. You've mentioned 2004, the success you had there. Do you feel any need to keep any of that staff that was still there, or was it more important for you to change everything, bring in a new attitude?

COACH CHIZIK: You know, when you take over a job, you know, you have to do what you think is the best for the program. And there were some people from the previous staff that are still on my staff, and theres some people that are not. And I used my best discernment on which ones I needed to keep and which ones I reluctantly had to let go.

Those are tough, tough decisions. But, again, in the name of putting together the best staff in the country, which was my goal, I had to make some tough decisions.

So there are some that are still there that remember the 2004 season, that went through it, but not many. But the players, they know it. They remember that season. It was a very special year. We don't talk about it over and over and over and force feed them. But they know that that was one of the greatest years in Auburn history.

Again, trying to kind of go back, you know, we're always striving to get back to that point. Being undefeated is hard enough; being undefeated in this league, that's a once in a long time situation to be in. It's just hard to do. It was a very special year for us.

Q. Some head coaches have come into the league, gotten a lot of attention. You've been rather low key. I'm curious if that's a choice that you made? Is that your personality? In this age, do you feel like maybe you need to be more of a personality than what you've been so far?

COACH CHIZIK: I've got three children and my wife. I get plenty of attention when I go home. I don't need.

What gets you attention is when you win. It's that simple. I don't have to go out and try to gather attention for myself. This isn't about me. This is about Auburn. It's not about me. It's not about our coaches. It's about Auburn.

Over the years when Auburn's gotten attention, it's because they've done something very positive, and that's what I want to do. So I don't care to draw a lot of attention to myself. It's just who I am. I care to draw attention to Auburn in a positive light. And if we're doing that, then I'm good.

Q. I have an Orlando question for you. A few years ago the UCF job was opened up. Were you ever interested in that? Were you disappointed when maybe you didn't get a chance for that job?

COACH CHIZIK: You know, I really don't live in the past, to be honest with you. I really don't. I feel like my steps have been ordered. Everywhere I've been is where I'm supposed to be. So I don't ever question that. I really don't. I'm not trying to be flippant. That's just not the way I operate.

Every job that I've taken, every job that I've got, I know there's a bigger plan for my life and I was supposed to get those jobs and that's where I was supposed to be.

Obviously that's not one of the places that I was supposed to be the head coach of. That's kind of how I live my life.

Q. Do you have the players that you need to run your systems on offense and defense?

COACH CHIZIK: You know, there's a fine line in there between putting in exactly what you would like to do on offense and defense and, you know, trying to adapt and adjust to the talent and the skill level that you have. And I think that's what really defines a great coach. You know, you've got to be able to do what you can do, stay within the realm of what you're comfortable with as a coach, yet still adapt enough, knowing that maybe talent wise and what you need on both sides of the ball, you're not quite there yet.

So I think it's a mixture, to answer your question, of what we're gonna have to be really good at in going back to us trying to be the best at our trade. What we've got to do is we've got and we've done this, we've kind of laid down the philosophy, the principles, the things that we know, we feel good about, we like what we're doing philosophically.

Offensively and defensively this is what we want to be. Yet still having to tweak a little bit of that because you don't necessarily have what you want. I don't think any coach is ever satisfied. That's why everybody's trying to get the better recruiting class than the one before, 'cause you want it to fit what you do even better.

So we're gonna be very, very structured in what we teach and how we teach it, yet we've also got to adapt and adjust to our personnel. So we're not gonna do something that we don't think we're physically fit to do, to answer the question. But that's part of coaching. We got to adapt and adjust, and we'll do that. But we'll certainly not try to pit a round peg in a square hole. We're not going to do that.

Q. Head coaches make a lot of money now. The salaries seem to be rising for the assistants, coordinators. Could you talk about that.

COACH CHIZIK: I think it's great. I think it's great. You know, I was an assistant three years ago, and I don't forget. Let me tell you something. These guys sacrifice a lot. They sacrifice a lot with their families, they sacrifice a lot with their time. Obviously, they do something they love to do. As somebody mentioned earlier, they talked about pressure. Well, there's pressure on the assistants to win, as well, and they feel it.

You know, there's a lot of sacrifices that go into this profession. I love the fact that the money for the assistants is starting to rise. I think it's very valid, in my opinion. You know, as far as me being the head coach, I'm sure that most coaches feel this way, we want to try to make sure we do for our assistant coaches all we can do to take care of them and their families.

Now, people say, They make so much money. Well, they also have a higher risk of a job than most people do, too. Their job's on the line every year. With that risk comes compensation. I get it. It should.

So I'm excited for them in terms of where the money has gone. I'd like to see it continue to work in that direction. And I know me personally, from my staff, I'm gonna do everything I can. And our administration is phenomenal, doing what we can do to make sure our guys are happy and compensate them for a great job that they do.

Q. There's been a lot of publicity about some of the recruiting events you have hosted, "Big Cat" weekend, Tiger Prowl, whatever else. Have you received enough big time commitments to kind of keep that kind of momentum going? Has it been worth it if you had not?

COACH CHIZIK: When we go to recruit, we go to recruit the right player for Auburn. That's what we do. If he is the right guy, then that's the guy that we offer, and that's the guy we try to recruit to come to Auburn.

So if you look at the commitments that we've got, it's because they're the right guy for Auburn. So we don't really again, I'll go back to we don't really get validated by the outside world, what their opinion is on players. 'Cause if I put together all the film time in this whole room of how many people have really evaluated each player, it probably wouldn't be 10 minutes. But that's what we do for a living.

So I trust our opinion. I trust what we see. We're gonna continue to recruit in a way that we think is best for Auburn. That's it. We're not trying to impress anybody. We're trying to recruit in what we think is the best way for Auburn. If a kid is recruited by Auburn and signed by Auburn, then we feel like he was the right guy for Auburn. What the outside world and outside opinion is about that player is really inconsequential to me.

Q. You were a walk on at Florida in the '80s. Talk about what you may have picked up from Charley Pell in terms of being a head coach, stuff like that? Did that actually get you in the mood or get you started toward becoming a head coach?

COACH CHIZIK: Well, it certainly did. I've had a lot of great people I've been around a lot of great people in my life that have really kind of influenced the coaching world for me and really kind of grabbed my attention and my interest, starting all the way back from my high school coach.

So Coach Pell was our head coach. Tough guy. Ran a great program. You know, I've had a lot of others since then, too, as well, that have influenced my life in the coaching profession. I've been blessed to be around a lot of guys that have been very successful. That's been big.

I would say certainly that had an influence on me, yes.

Q. Can you talk about the addition of receivers Emory Blake and DeAngelo Benton, the impact they'll have on the offense.

COACH CHIZIK: I reluctantly talk about young guys because not one of them has taken a snap at Auburn yet. You ask about those two specifically. I'll simply say that they're very talented guys, in our opinion. It's gonna take them some time to get used to all of the things that you have to do to play in this league. The transition obviously from a high school player to the SEC, that's probably the toughest transition in college football.

But those two have a lot of talent. We hope they can step up to the plate and help our offense this year. In a perfect world, that's what would happen. But I certainly can't comment on it this early. We haven't even had a practice yet.

You know, they're two guys that, again, we hope can help our offense, but only time will tell.

Q. Last season Auburn was 2 6. Do you feel you're that far away from being able to contend in the West? How do you feel where you're situated going into your first year?

COACH CHIZIK: You know, the SEC West, it's tough, boy. Every week, as you know, it's a dogfight.

You know, our plan is to contend for a championship in everything that we do. We don't think that's out of the realm of possibility. We talk to it about our players, winning championships. That's what matters.

Again, we're going to start the season out. That's going to be the goal, to win the SEC West. I think that in this league, again, anything can happen. So it's not like the SEC West championships are a stranger to Auburn. So we'll work hard in that direction. I think our players feel very confident that we can be a very good football team. We'll just have to let it all play out on the field.

THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you.

COACH CHIZIK: Thank you.

Defensive End Antonio Coleman

On his expectations for the season:
"I guess you can they're high. The coaching staff, just a new vibe for Auburn football."

On the coaching change:
"Any time you have a coach for 10 years and then a new coaching staff comes in, there will be changes. With all the changes, it's been great for the university. Fortunately, one Auburn man dropped off he radar and the good Lord brought another Auburn man."

On the media preseason poll:
"It's not a big deal to us. I've talked to the guys and they expect me to be a leader. We don't buy inot the polls. First through sixth, at the end of the day, you still have to get o the field and prove it. It's all about us getting on the field and proving it day in and day out.

On his expectations:
"With all the work we've put in with the new coaching staff, the sky's the limit."

On returning for his senior year:
"Being an Auburn man and wanting to turn the program around, I didn't want a 5-7 hanging over my head. He (Chizik) recruited me before he left, and that, along with getting a chance to play with my little nephew starting in a few weeks, it'll be a blessing."

On the changes with Coach Chizik:
"I've been at Auburn for five years, and this has been the hardest summer of my life, getting up at 5:30 every morning for workouts. It's all going to be a blessing when we start Sept. 5."

On offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn:
"You have one of the best in the business running the offense. It's a different type of spread with running he ball first and getting the ball down the field. At the end of the spring, they started getting a hold of things. I think it'll be real fun and interesting to see how things turn out."

On the differences between last year and this year:
"The most important thing we lost is swagger (during last year) and I think we have it back. We got people hurt, people injured, and we didn't finish the way we wanted, but we can't harp on that, it was last year."

Tight End Tommy Trott

On offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn:
"The first impression's been great. We've been with him all through the spring and as much as possible since then because he can't be out there in the summer. He's a football nut, football 24/7. He's brought a successful offense here, and hopefully things will work well."

On the tight end's importance under Malzahn:
"The tight ends hopefully are going to play a big role for the offense. It's about not just being out there for passes but digging down and getting people off the line. There's also times when the tight end moves in motion into the backfield, so there's a lot to the role."

On last year's offense:
"Last year was a crazy year. As an offense, we never really found our identity. Hopefully with Coach Malzahn, we can establish an identity and figure out what we want to do as an offense. You look at what Coach Malzahn has done in his year at Arkansas and those years at Tulsa, and you know he's been successful everywhere he's been."

On the battle for starting quarterback:
"I'm sure the coaches will make a decision when they see them in the fall. I can tell you they're all looking good this summer. There's a whole lot of competition out there, and hopefully, it will help us in the fall."

On Antonio Coleman's comments about getting swagger back at Auburn:
"The easier answer (about how to get swagger back) is by being physical. That's something that maybe has been lost over the last five years. That's something Coach Chizik has been preaching. There was a lot more contact in drills in the spring than since I've been here. Antonio's right, we're going to try to get that swag back."

On being more physical:
"This offense gives us the ability to be physical because to be successful, we're going to have to run the football. Last year, you saw more horizontal running, more sideline to sideline. With this offense, the quarterback can turn around and give it to the back so there's hopefully more downhill running and an opportunity to move the line forward."

On Coach Chizik:
"He's brought an aura, an enthusiasm, because he's excited to be back at Auburn. He's been preaching physicality, and hopefully brought more discipline to the team, things like taking your hats off in the building and pulling your pants up."

On summer workouts:
"A lot of it is on us as a team when we can't see the coaches. During the summer, that's when one team separates itself from another I truly believe. In years past, we'd go out for 7-on-7 drills and call it quits after about 30 minutes. This year, we're out there for like 1 ½ hours sometimes. That's one good thing about being a senior is that you have more control over those types of things."

SOUTH CAROLINA GAMECOCKS

COACH STEVE SPURRIER

THE MODERATOR: We are ready to continue with South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier. Coach, welcome.

COACH SPURRIER: Okay. Thanks. Nice to be here again. Figured out this is my 17th year at the SEC Media Days. I feel very fortunate to be here. Hope to be here again next year for the 18th. Look forward to this day to kick off SEC football.

As I've been asked several times, I need to address it right now, who did you vote for. In actuality, I didn't do much voting at all. I didn't fill the sheet out. But, anyway, my answer was some coach made a pretty serious mistake, either dumb or careless mistake, by not having Tim Tebow as his first selection.

When all this came up Wednesday, I guess, in the Thursday morning paper, I read, Some guy did not vote for Tim Tebow. Who was that? Our director of operation filled it out, brought it in to me one day. I looked at it quickly. I said, That's fine. I signed off on it.

I called him. I said, Certainly we had Tim Tebow. He said, Well, actually, coach, we had Jevan Snead. He said something about we already had 10 Gators, maybe get another guy. I said, That's bad. But it's my fault. I take full responsibility. I messed that up. I apologize to Tim Tebow. We screwed it up pretty badly. I'm embarrassed about it. I feel bad about it. That's the way it happened.

I've called Charlie Bloom. I said, Can I change our selection from South Carolina and put Tim Tebow in?

He said, Yes.

I was able to put Tim Tebow in today, so it's unanimous.

I know some of you may think that's maybe not right, but we made a mistake there. I made a mistake. Tim Tebow is not only the best quarterback in this league, I think he's the best in the country. I think he's the best football player in the country. What he's done there, I believe he and Danny Wuerffel will go down in history as the two best quarterbacks, maybe the two best to ever play college football. That's how good he is.

I admire and respect him. I apologize to him. He should have been on that ballot. We messed up. I messed up. I'm trying to correct it best I can. But I messed it up. I take full blame for it. That's the way it happened. That's the way it happened. We'll try to move on. I still feel very badly about what happened there.

Okay. South Carolina football. We didn't finish very well last year. We lost our last three games. Actually got clobbered pretty good last three games. We weren't as competitive as we were early in the year. It was time to do some things differently. A few coaches left on their own. A few were asked to leave. We have five new assistant coaches and a new strength conditioning coach.

What was the most encouraging part of all this is that after the Bowl game, we did not lose any committed players. They all came. They all stuck with us. We actually picked up a few more. So it was a sign, the high school players, some of the top athletes, still believe that South Carolina can win, and win big.

We've averaged seven wins a year, 28 in four years. Certainly we hope to get up to the 9, 10 wins a year level. We're not there yet. We actually only have seven seniors on the team this year. We've got two fifth year players coming back. I don't know that they will be starters. But that's just sort of where we are.

I've not done as good a job as I hoped to have done. I would have hoped we had a whole lot of fourth and fifth year guys ready to play. Hasn't worked out that way.

Again, have some new coaches. We believe our leadership, amongst our seniors, Eric Norwood, Moe Brown, who are here today, has been very good through the summer. Our quarterback, Stephen Garcia, has gone through his first spring practice. Now he's going through his first summer of workouts with the team. If we're to have a big year, he's got to really, really play well. He's got to play a lot better than what happened last year. He really was not prepared to play well last year. Hopefully he's much better, ready to play.

But other than that, we're looking forward to another year. We open up with NC State, national TV, Thursday night again. Appreciate ESPN, Dave Brown, his guys putting us on those Thursday nights. Hopefully we will play with more discipline and play with more effort and more passion than we have in the past. Looking forward to seeing what happens this coming season.

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. Do you think the ballot miscommunication might be a symptom of something that is a problem in college football with coaches not filling out top 25s or all league ballots themselves, having somebody else do it?

COACH SPURRIER: Well, I guess I've been doing the pre season ballots for 17 years. I've never filled one out. But I usually look at it. I did glance at the one this year, but I didn't glance very thoroughly. So it was my fault. It was my fault all the way on it.

Yeah, personally we vote. I don't know why we vote. I guess we vote 'cause college football is still without a playoff system. I really believe most coaches do not know a whole lot about other teams, but we do vote. That's what they ask us to do.

I think we all try to do the best we can. But, hey, I don't know the answer.

Q. How is the offensive play calling going to work this year? Are you going to take a more active role or is it going to be a group effort?

COACH SPURRIER: We haven't discussed that finally yet. We've got some coaches that have called some plays there, and I've called a few I guess in my career. But I will still have the title of head coach, and I guess offensive coordinator. I'll be in charge of it.

But we'll have a way of getting them in there. Eric Wolford, our line coach, you called a bunch of them during the scrimmage one day. He's got some runs. So he's going to chip in with, Let's run this, let's run that. Our receiver coach will chip in some here and there.

But who's the main guy in charge, we haven't really formalized that yet.

Q. Is it a bit different going to coaches meetings, SEC Media Days, Tuberville is not here, Fulmer is not here, new faces? Is that kind of weird for you?

COACH SPURRIER: Well, I saw Gene Chizik here. I know him a little bit (smiling).

Change is inevitable in coaching. We all know that. Probably didn't think it would happen last year. I remember, I think my first year at the SEC meeting in Destin, I was sitting next to Pat Dye. He says, Boys, look around, 'cause a lot of y'all ain't gonna be here next year, or some y'all ain't gonna be here next year.

But, anyway, it happens. Again, I feel very fortunate to be coming into my 17th one. Just hope to make it next year. But if it doesn't go pretty well, change is part of the coaching profession. We all understand that. We understand it happens.

Q. Obviously you're a University of Florida sports legend. Are you concerned how Gator fans are going to react?

COACH SPURRIER: I'm embarrassed about what happened. I really am. I'm embarrassed. It shouldn't have happened. I apologized to Tim and all Gators that it happened. That's exactly how it happened. I have no reason to not say anything or to slight Tim Tebow or the Gators.

It's given me an opportunity to voice my opinion of Tim and Danny Wuerffel. Those are two of the best character young men, most sincere Christian young men I've ever known. It was something that just happened. I feel badly about it. In fact, I didn't sleep worth a dang last night thinking about it. But it's history. I'm trying to correct it the best I can.

After I knew it happened, I got in touch with Charlie. I said, You make sure that I voted for Tim Tebow. So he changed it. He put South Carolina's new quarterback is Tim Tebow and not Jevan Snead. Snead is a good player, too, but Tim Tebow should have been in there.

Q. Could you assess your first four years there, where do you think your program is going into the fifth year? Is it where you thought it would be?

COACH SPURRIER: Well, we thought we'd do a little bit better, but it hasn't worked out. We're starting a new four year stint with a lot of new coaches and hopefully a lot better attitude on our team.

Again, you know, we only have seven seniors on the team this year, so obviously four, five years ago we thought our recruiting was pretty good, maybe just hadn't worked out, what have you. But we've averaged seven wins. Again, 28 wins is the most over a four year period. There was one other four year period in South Carolina history they had 28 wins.

Of course, we play more games now. We've been just a little above average. Ask me how you're doing. A little above average, that's all.

But we hope to do better. Again, our facility improvement has been tremendous in the last four years. Eric Hyman, our AD, our boosters, Doe Anderson, contributed, Dr. Charles Cruz, the contributions from the people who can give has been tremendous. We're making progress.

We're getting national recruit type players that maybe we used to not get. Stephon Gilmore was Player of the Year in the state of Alabama in the state of South Carolina. He could have gone to Alabama, he could have gone to a lot of places. He chose to stay in state there at South Carolina. We believe we're heading in the right direction now.

Q. Talk about the improvement that you saw over the spring in the running game?

COACH SPURRIER: It was a little bit better. Certainly it had nowhere to go but up. We finished bottom of the league in rushing this past year. We were bottom of the league in sacks, bottom of the league in turnovers. Somebody said, How did you win seven games? I said, Our defense played very well, and some games our offense played very well. We had two or three very good offensive games at Ole Miss, at Kentucky, and maybe the Arkansas game was a good one for us.

But we need to run the ball much better. We all know that. We did a little bit better this spring running. So we'll see if we can do it during the season.

Q. With what you've said so far about the ballot situation, how will you handle that in the future? Will you continue to do the same thing, maybe proofread it longer?

COACH SPURRIER: Well, I just need to thoroughly look at the ballots before we send 'em in. I did not do that this last time. But when we do the top 25, yeah, I look at 'em. I do 'em. And I change 'em around all the time, this, that, and the other. I do a better job with those than I did with this pre season thing. Let's just put it that way. I can tell you, two guys that were on there, AJ Green and Carlos Dunlap. Those were the only two names I saw. I said, Thats fine. Anyway, I did a poor job of looking at it.

Q. To talk about your own quarterback situation rather than this situation, even coming out of the spring, you said that Stephen Garcia had more to do for you to feel a hundred percent comfortable. Are you at that point yet? You mentioned Stephon Gilmore. Could you see him in that role, at least as a wildcat situation?

COACH SPURRIER: Stephon Gilmore was the Player of the Year in the state of South Carolina. Played quarterback. His team went undefeated, won a state championship. He is a wonderful athlete, player. He feels like his long range college and NFL is as a defensive corner. But certainly he can come in there and run that shotgun spread offense stuff that a lot of the schools are doing now.

We worked him a little bit this spring. We'll continue trying to get the ball in his hands some. He is really something with the ball in his hands. We got to utilize him also on offense a little bit here and there.

Q. As somebody who has coached in the NFL, I want your opinion on what you think Tim Tebow's pro career will be like.

COACH SPURRIER: I think Tim will be an excellent pro quarterback if the pro team says, Here's what we're gonna run, we're gonna run what you've been doing. I'm still sort of waiting to see a team go a lot to that. They haven't done it yet. I thought maybe the Tennessee Titans might do it when they got Vince Young. You know, maybe that's not what's best for NFL. I don't know.

But if they spread out and give him an opportunity to run and throw, hey, nobody does it better than Tim Tebow, running and throwing, at quarterback.

Q. Does he have the kind of talent to merit a top 10 pick?

COACH SPURRIER: Well, you'd have to ask NFL people that. But certainly as coaches, every one of us would want him on our team. You know, talking about Stephen Garcia here a minute ago, I think this spring or later I said, Stephen, one day I hope you can say what Tim Tebow said about no quarterback will prepare better or harder than me to play, and no quarterback will try to get his team prepared to play harder than I will.

Of course, they won every game after he said that statement, after they lost to Ole Miss. That's a commitment level that he has that is unmatched by any other player probably in the nation. We're trying to get our quarterback Stephen Garcia way up there in those two areas right there.

Q. When it comes to recruiting, have you taken at all to the proliferation of the new social media things like Facebook and Twitter?

COACH SPURRIER: Our assistant coaches do a little bit of that. I've not messed with it that match. I tell you what, I got a strong group of assistant coaches. They can recruit without me just about. I got an offensive line coach now that's got about seven commitments already. I was involved a little bit. But, you know, he basically got 'em. He sold himself and South Carolina.

It's good to have coaches like that on your staff.

Q. How concerned are you about the depth in the secondary? Do you think you have enough bodies to get through an entire season?

COACH SPURRIER: Yeah, we're a little light in the secondary. That's probably one reason Stephon Gilmore is over there as a starter. High school kid. He was with the starting group during spring ball. So we did lose some players there. We had a few come out early, a few guys thought they were going to be drafted a lot earlier than they were. But we're trying to sign some defensive back, corner type players, especially this year.

Q. Not to beat this like a dead horse, but why don't you fill out your ballot? Could you speak again to the importance of the coaches poll, them releasing their final ballots, since they're going to stop doing it in 2010?

COACH SPURRIER: You talking about the top 25 rankings and so forth?

Q. The pre season.

COACH SPURRIER: Oh, the pre season. I haven't done that in 17 years. I usually look it over and I sign off on it. I did a poor job of looking it over this year.

Q. Talk about the coaches poll.

COACH SPURRIER: I look that over a lot more thoroughly.

Q. You said a bunch of times that needs to be out there, published.

COACH SPURRIER: Yeah, that's fine. Pretty much whatever you do, whatever it is, you know, put your name on it.

Q. I know you're proud of your football team this year. You're very optimistic about the season. I apologize from deflecting from that. Can you go over one more time in terms of your conversation with, first of all, when you realized it, when you talked to Charles Bloom, how you were able to discern?

COACH SPURRIER: I've already said that. I'll talk to you later about it. They don't need to hear this. I'll talk to you afterwards about that.

Q. When you're looking at the success that quarterbacks have in the SEC, how important is it experience as a part of that success?

COACH SPURRIER: Certainly experience helps. The ability to think clearly and make quick decisions helps. Training, experience, practice, practice, practice. All those things are very helpful. Certainly you have to have ability to start with.

So one good thing about our situation, we don't have four guys fighting it out for quarterback. So Stephen is gonna get about all the snaps. Hopefully he can stay healthy. I don't know who the second guy will be right now. Reid McCollum is probably the guy right now who is a good, tall quarterback, can throw the ball. Just hasn't played much. Doesn't know a lot.

Aramis Hillary is there. He struggled a bit playing the ball this spring. But Stephen will get most of the snaps. We certainly hope he can stay healthy.

Q. Gene Chizik was in here talking about how he hasn't really tried to stir the pot, make outlandish public statements as a newcomer. A bit of a contrast. As somebody who has always spoken their mind, do you think some of guys that come in here should win a few games before they start saying this and that?

COACH SPURRIER: Well, yeah, I'm often asked: Do you wish you hadn't said this years ago, done this? I say, yeah, probably looking back, that was a little arrogant. I probably said too many things.

But in life when you're winning a lot, you're winning sort of big, you naturally do that. I'm not the only coach that has done that. And then when you're 7 6, like I am now, you don't have much to say. That's just the way it is. I'm a 7 and sort of 6 coach right now. I don't have all the answers and don't pretend to.

But, yeah, I think we all try to let our teams it's best to let your teams do the talking for you as a coach. That's the best way to do it, certainly.

Q. Can you talk about the tight end position, Weslye Saunders.

COACH SPURRIER: Weslye, we hope, is getting ready to play very well at tight end. He'll be our starters. Also Cliff Matthews will play some there. We're going to double train Cliff, start at defensive end, to play some tight end. A lot of people think Cliff Matthews' ultimate position in the NFL may be tight end. He's a tough kid, can run all day. He's about 260. That's probably about as heavy as he can get.

Cliff Matthews and Weslye gives us two pretty good tight ends right there.

Q. Does Florida's success they've had under Urban Meyer bother you at all personally?

COACH SPURRIER: No, it doesn't. I pull for Florida when they're not playing us. If we don't win the SEC, I hope Florida does it. Urban has been the best coach in the country the last three years. Simple as that. We all know that. I admire everything that they do. They do it the right way. Their players play clean. They do it the right way. I give 'em credit for everything that they've accomplished. I admire what they've done.

Q. For all that Lane Kiffin has said since being hired at Tennessee, do you think his actions have suggested that he can get them turned around?

COACH SPURRIER: You know, I'm trying to refrain from talking about other schools that much. Maybe you need to ask somebody else that question.

Q. The way teams are spreading the field these days, has that at all influenced the way you're calling plays, the way your own offensive philosophy is? You've always been a guy that ran two or three wides, but you usually just run center.

COACH SPURRIER: Yeah, we've changed quite a bit. We're probably at least 50% in the shotgun now. We still think there's a place for running straight at people and play action passes. The draw play has been our best running play still is probably. So we try to do both.

We try to get in the shotgun and run some spread offense, as well as underneath.

Q. How tough is it to move up in the SEC East, given Florida, Georgia, Tennessee? Given South Carolina's history of lack of championships, are you confident you can win a championship, an SEC championship?

COACH SPURRIER: I think Steve Fink, our sports information guy, said we're picked fourth in the Eastern Division for the seventh year in a row. That's where we are, we're fourth until we prove we can do better.

Again, we haven't turned it around big time yet. We're trying to get there. So we're encouraged by a lot of things that have happened since the Bowl game. Since the Bowl game, a lot of encouraging events have happened. We're looking forward to see how it plays out this season.

Q. You were actually picked third in the East.

COACH SPURRIER: We were? Somebody told me fourth. Where is Steve Fink (smiling)? Oh, prior to this year. My bad.

Seven years prior to this year we were picked fourth. Now we're third. Okay, thanks for correcting me. I didn't know that.

Q. Adding Lorenzo Ward to your staff, how did that come about? How are you going to break up the responsibilities? What is he going to do?

COACH SPURRIER: Ask that first part again.

Q. Can you just talk about adding Lorenzo Ward to your staff, how that came about. How are you going to dole out responsibilities?

COACH SPURRIER: Adding who?

Q. Lorenzo Ward?

COACH SPURRIER: Oh, Coach Ward, yeah. Lorenzo. Yeah, Lorenzo Ward, he's got the title of defensive coordinator. He's going to help Ellis Johnson do that. Ellis is assistant head coach. Coach Whammy, Lorenzo, he's known by Whammy Ward. But he's a solid coach. You know, he played at Alabama, coached at Virginia Tech a lot, several years. Went to the NFL for a little bit. Then he was available. We sort of stole him from Arkansas a year ago, last year.

But he's a good guy. Loves to play golf. We've had a bunch of golf games together. I've actually got about four or five coaches on the staff that love to play golf. I don't know what that means. He's a pretty good stick. But he's a real good coach.

He's got a good Alabama background for coaching defense. And Virginia Tech background coaching defense. Those boys have been very good up there, as we know.

Q. How tough is the SEC West going to be this year?

COACH SPURRIER: I see both sides pretty close really, when you think of LSU, Alabama, Auburn, Mississippi now. Mississippi proved that they're ready to contend over there in the West. So, yeah, a lot of good teams. A lot of good teams.

Yeah, I mean, we'll have to play it all out. But they could be overall stronger than the East. Who knows. We'll play it out. I think both of 'em are pretty close.

And Arkansas will be much better this year, too. Bobby Petrino is a heck of a coach. They'll be much improved.

Q. You just mentioned Urban won two national titles the last three years. You had your run in the '90s. Florida State and Miami had their runs. Is it just the recruiting base by Florida is such a great college football state or is it something else?

COACH SPURRIER: That's part of it. But, obviously, Florida hasn't always won there, won big there. All you got to do is check Urban Meyer's background. He's won everywhere he's been. Now he's probably got a little bit better players than at the other schools. The guy went 12 0 at Utah. They won at Bowling Green. He's proven to be one of the best coaches in the country. He's probably the top guy in the country right now.

And obviously the facilities, players in the state. But they go out of state, also. I think they went to Virginia to get Percy. So they're recruiting more nationally probably than what we used to do down there.

THE MODERATOR: Coach. Thank you.

COACH SPURRIER: All right. Thanks.

WR Moe Brown

On playing for Coach Spurrier:
It's a different experience everyday. He's not one thing. I will tell you he is one of the most competitive guys you'll eve meet. He has a way to bring out the best in me. He knows how to push our buttons in a way that test our strengths and challenges us to better our weaknesses. Definitely because of Coach I've become a mentally strong person.

On being considered a "veteran" on the team:
Funny you ask that because it really feels like I just got here and it is my first day of freshman year. It's gone by so fast. As a senior, I've stepped into that leadership position and I take that role with great seriousness.

On his leadership style:
I'm one of the most vocal guys on the team. I go hard and lead through example. Like, when we do running drills, I make sure we finish to the line, there is no pulling up. We have to pay attention to details.

On teamwork:
The difference in this year's team compared to years past is the leaders we have. There's seven seniors and we all play a certain role. We hold each other accountable.

On what it will take to get past the threshold of six/seven wins seasons:
In the SEC, there's always tight games. Every game you play in this conference, you have a chance to win. Finishing the game is how we will get there past seven wins.

On the toughest stadium to play in the SEC:
I think we're a really good road team in general. I would have to say Florida. Florida gets very loud. At times, when the crowd gets going, I find it hard to hear my guy only five people down.

On the change of having four new offensive line coaches:
It's been a very smooth transition. They're all great coaches and very team-oriented. It's a different atmosphere, definitely, but it brings something new in, a certain excitement.

On whether Spurrier ever throws the football at practice:
Yeah, Coach gets on the field and throws every now and again. If the quarterbacks aren't throwing the ball the way he wants, he'll step in and show them how it's done. You have to be on your game, very careful when coach throws to you. It's a more intense moment at practice. You don't want to drop a pass from Coach. He's still got some zip to it, definitely.

LB Eric Norwood

On playing for Spurrier:
He's great to play for. He's very demanding and a real competitor. I like him a lot.

On his decision not to enter the NFL Draft:
A lot of stuff weighed into my decision. It's definitely kind of frustrating. I wasn't looking at it from a financial view. It was more about living my dream. But everything happens for a reason, and it is just one of those things I have to just wait for.

On the expectations and perception of the program:
Expectations haven't dimmed down and neither has the talent. The talent is up there with every other team in the SEC. We are really looking forward to winning, and winning big.

On being tagged a leader as a senior:
I embrace the title of leader. But I share it with the seven other seniors. We have a lot of young guys on the team, so there's an opportunity there to step in and leave an impression that will impact football years from now. Our job is to lead the team, but we're all different leaders.

On Moe Brown's leadership:
Moe is the vocal guy. He makes the speeches in the locker room, gets the hype up and the team excited before the game. He brings it all.

LSU TIGERS

COACH LES MILES

THE MODERATOR: We will continue on with LSU head Coach Les Miles. Coach, welcome.

COACH MILES: Well, summer is over. I trust it is for you, as well. The Miles family played youth sports and swam, had the opportunity to get our feet in some sand. I reacquainted myself with my children. I find I have four children, two of them that call me dad, and two of them that call me daddy. I enjoy that.

I'm still getting around and doing alumni talks. Last night I was in Houston. Any time you get a group of LSU faithful together, it is great energy. I'm fortunate to represent LSU. There is a great passion that surrounds the program. People relive their experience. It's always been one that's a family treasure, and they carry that experience out into the community.

Our guys are having the kinds of experiences that, you know, everybody in sport, for that matter, everybody in college, would love to have. This spring I had three football players that won national titles in other sports. Chad Jones and Jared Mitchell were part of a national championship World Series baseball team at LSU. Trindon Holliday won the 100 meters in the NCAA.

I can tell you, I insist on them going to school, I can tell you I insist on them doing the right things, and they're having the kind of experience that everybody in sport would love to have.

I want to congratulate Mike Slive and our conference. They've set up a great partnership with ESPN and CBS. We will be covered as well as any conference in the country. I think that's fair and right, because I believe in my heart that it's as competitive as any conference in the country.

I can tell you that coming off last year, eight victories and a Bowl win was not enough. Our football team's a little more wanting, a little bit more ambitious. I think that's spilled into the preparation in the off season. We had a very good spring. I think our summer, a price has been paid as we go into fall camp. Very much look forward to getting that team together.

Offensively, certainly we'll be better. A year ago we put three freshmen quarterbacks on the field, all of which at one point in time got hurt. One currently has eight games experience as a starter, one three. I can tell you that both Jordan Jefferson and Jarrett Lee will take the field with a lot more experience and comfort with what we expect of our quarterback.

If we had to start today, I would start Jordan Jefferson, but I believe our offense will function extremely well with the idea that our quarterbacks are a little bit more veteran. Charles Scott, that offensive line, should catch speed quickly. I think our receivers are going to be an advantage for us. JoJo LaFell, Brandon LaFell, is expected by his coaches and his team to have a great year. Terrance Toliver, I think we can put a number of receivers on the field that can do damage to an opponent's defense.

Richard Dixon, our tight end, coming into his final campaign, is poised to have a great year. It's a diverse offense. It's one that's gonna be difficult to defend. We look forward to taking the field with them.

Defensively, we got a new staff. We put John Chavis in as defensive coordinator. His experience in this league, his comfort with a dominant defense, met very comfortably with those men on our campus where we have played dominant defense for our time. I think the introduction in the start, this spring, certainly as we go forward, went well.

Ron Cooper, our secondary coach, and Brick Haley, the defensive line, I think there's a great deal of experience and ability in the coaching staff. Again, our players want to play great, and understand theres a work habit and a work ethic there that's established. Again, I think it will fall together nicely.

The defensive line, we'll graduate some guys. But there will be some men there that have experience. We recruited well behind them. I think there will be some competition as we come to the line of scrimmage. A veteran at linebacker, the entire corporation, from Harry Coleman, Jacob Cutrera, Perry Riley, Kelvin Sheppard, all of which have a great deal of experience, and will give us a line backing core that will make the transition.

I think we're talented in the secondary. I think Chad Jones, being, you know, put in as our free safety, allowing him to get comfortable at a spot, will benefit his development. I think he's a very talented player. We look forward to that continuing.

But I think our defense will be better, as well.

In special teams, I think Trindon Holliday, our return game, is ready to mature. We look forward to some big plays there. We have a new punter in Derek Helton who, in my opinion, had a great spring, has had a great summer. I think our special teams will be lined with speed, will be able to cover, do the things we're capable of doing.

Every year a team takes on a new character and a new personality. It has to do with their talent and their skill. It has to do with the chemistry within that team. It has to do with leadership. And I can tell you that, as an example of leadership, Ciron Black, a four year starter, a guy that came in and played a lot, has been through all the games, played all the big games, and is in his final spring playing his best football. As he approaches his final fall, again, he's prepared to play, in my opinion, his best season of football.

Jacob Cutrera, played a lot of football, played in most every game, but really in a backup position, in a position where development had to take place, hard work, the competitive fire. Now it's his turn, it's his time.

I just really think that our leadership I think the philosophy is clean. I think they understand the team. I think they want to be a part. I think they're ambitious. I look forward to this team.

I'm anxious to coach 'em. Can't wait till they report.

I know there's some issues out there that people want to talk to me about. I had everybody and his brother ask me did I vote for Tebow. I certainly did. He has always had great games against us. Personally, I'm for him. I like who he is. So, yeah, I voted for him.

I can tell you this. I'm going to call Jefferson and my quarterbacks and hold them to that level of play. I think that anybody that didn't vote for him has that right certainly, but that's their call.

Now, I don't know that anybody's mentioned officiating. I think the officials have a very difficult time this fall. There's a rule change that, in my opinion, will really affect how officials call the game. It's the helmet to helmet contact. It will be interesting to see how it's called.

Football is one where you have to take somebody on in a frontal position, it's certainly a point of leverage, that helmet. And safety is a key. I certainly think that the rule is a right rule. But I think it has the potential to be over-officiated.

We have a great officiating the SEC, in my opinion, are guys that take their job very seriously. But I think it's a tough rule. It will be interesting to see how that all pans out.

Are there any questions?

Q. Last year was the first year you had kids that hadn't won 11 ballgames in a year. How much of a shock was that to their systems and how did that translate into work ethic in the spring?

COACH MILES: I think there's a level of acceptable achievement at our school. I think our guys understand it. I think championship is how we're measured. I understand how that happens. But it's not any fun.

I had somebody ask me, you know, Is that something you expect? You never expect to finish second, not at LSU.

I think our team has prepared in earnest. I think it will be seen this fall.

Q. Steve Spurrier said he did not actually fill out his ballot. He lets an assistant do it. Do you do the same? Do you approve it? How does that work?

COACH MILES: In this particular year, I had Michael Barnett, in conjunction with me, fill that ballot out. But those were my calls, as well.

Q. What kind of differences should we expect defensively between what you had with Bo Pelini and what you expect now with Chavis?

COACH MILES: I think you'll find that the structure of the defenses are the same. They have the opportunity to operate out of a two shell or a single high. We can put four or three on the field, down linemen. I think that the opportunity to zone dog from the field, boundary, to blitz, I think you'll find that that is the same.

I think what is also similar is a want and a desire to give relentless effort. So I think there will be some similarities, but some differences as well, based on personnel.

Q. When you vote in the coaches' poll, you fill out your ballot?

COACH MILES: Absolutely.

Q. I don't know if there's a link between the two. What's the difference with what happened here now in the pre season ballot and that? Shouldn't you be filling that thing out yourself?

COACH MILES: Well, I do in conjunction. It's an over the phone conversation that takes place. Yeah, I think there's a responsibility that the school do it well and do it right. Certainly the head coach's opinion on players is most valid.

Q. Jordan Jefferson had a very impressive Bowl game last year. What is he doing to maintain his ability to get better?

COACH MILES: Well, he's bigger and stronger than he's been. In my opinion, the experience that he had in his true freshman year will benefit him tremendously. You know, so many times you want to get on the field, you want to get on the field, then you realize you have cadence, stems in motions, the ability to execute the offense becomes a little bit harder to do other than when you're standing on the sideline where it appears easy.

That adjustment and that experience will certainly benefit him going into the fall. He has had a great summer. He's stronger. He's bigger. He's run our seven on seven. Our players get together in the evening a couple nights a week and throw seven on seven. Both he and Jarrett Lee have done that. We expect those guys, we expect Jordan Jefferson, to have a great fall.

Q. With John Chavis coming on board, at the end of last season, specifically the Arkansas game, y'all had a few, I think you would call them, on field discipline issues that cost you in penalties, maybe cost the ballgame. In bringing Chavis on board, was that a charge you gave to him to shape up the Tiger discipline?

COACH MILES: No. That's my responsibility. And I took those observations you made in our last game as observations that I also made. I can tell you that that will not happen again.

Q. In dealing with Ciron Black on a day to day basis, I found him to be a very thoughtful person who considers his comments, measures what he has to say. Just wanted to get your impressions, after spending as much time around him as you have, about how much intelligence he's got and how thoughtful he is. Maybe if you see him somewhere down the line in a broadcast booth doing NFL analysis or something like that.

COACH MILES: Very talented man. Not only athletically, but I think he has an intuitive sense, an understanding what's going on, not only in his daily life, but in football. It's really interesting to watch a young man mature.

The fun thing for the coach is you get to spend four or five years with a guy, and you get to see him grow. You get to see where he came from, where he's going. It's reassuring. I think Ciron Black will be a great representative of LSU for years to come.

Q. The struggles that your quarterbacks had last season, how much do you attribute that to inexperience and how much do you value experience in your quarterbacks?

COACH MILES: When you put a young one on the line of scrimmage with the opportunity to execute, and you have schooled him and trained him all through practice snaps, you've gone to live. Live scrimmage, let's say you could get a game in in a two a day schedule. One quarterback could have a solid, full game. The experiences that he might have in that 70 to 90 plays just wouldn't prepare him for the season. It's just not enough.

So what happens is, is you'd like to have one quarterback that took every one of your snaps and you prepared him with every snap he just had for the next snap that he's about to have; that the situation he was just in would compare favorably to a situation he was about to be in, and on the field away from the coaches with a down and distance and a time clock pressuring him. There's nothing but experience that will teach that.

We're fortunate, in my opinion, to have two guys that have experienced that, and at this point in time can look towards their development to happen a little bit more even and with more success.

Q. Wondering if you enjoyed Omaha, and with all the air time you got when you were up there during the college World Series, coming during a key time in recruiting, if you noticed any benefit from that, a couple of your players playing key roles on that team, and how players playing other sports has evolved?

COACH MILES: I've been fortunate through my career to have guys that have played multiple sports. Bennie Brazell, a track guy, also played wide receiver here. Trindon Holliday certainly, as well. I think that if LSU is a consideration, and you have a great interest in a spring sport, certainly that's something that we have had the opportunity to work out.

I think there are times in a young man's career where he has to focus on getting it done in football. Certainly a quarterback has a great burden that he has to learn the offense, operate the offense well. Not necessarily is he ready to go to a spring sport.

I think it's harder. I think those guys that do that have a difficult time because of the academics. I think the load on the academic student athlete that has two sports is greater. The time frame where you get through with a spring football season and you get to really concentrate and finish your academic semester strongly without the lure of a practice or the want for a game, I think is easier.

But I think in our society, we want more. I think the opportunity to have those experiences is greater. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed watching Jared Mitchell lead off the third game with a home run. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed watching Chad Jones throw left handed and throw dominantly and look like a beast on the mound, come off and chest pump a guy and dang near knock him down.

There was a play at first base where Chad had to cover for the bag, a routine play where the first baseman has to leave the bag, the pitcher has to come over and take the throw. And I said to myself, If that runner had gone a little left of center, contact would not have been adverse for that pitcher.

I enjoyed my experience. I think that those experiences that those guys are having will mark their life very positively. I think it's important. The only thing I can tell you about air time, if they're taking pictures of a football coach in the stands, it's a slow game.

Q. Assistant salaries have been on the increase in recent years, especially in the SEC. I wanted your take on that. Maybe when certain guys become available, schools can get in a bidding war. How hard is it to keep other schools from raiding your staff in an atmosphere like that?

COACH MILES: I think we're fortunate to live in a country where those things, market value, is generally looked at as a positive thing. How wonderful it is for an assistant coach to be able to make a great living, provide for his family, talk about retirement, all the things that you want to do.

What he's done to put himself in that position is go to college, spend hours early and late generally at the beginning of his career and not be paid a darn. In fact, about $8200 a year in their GA years. To go basically as an intern to an assistant coach's job, work up the ladder. In my opinion, it's wonderful that the assistant coach's salaries are escalating fairly, in my opinion.

I also think when you come to LSU, it's not just the salary; it's the want to coach the student athlete that comes to our school, it's the want to pursue a championship. So generally, I had great opportunity to keep my assistant coaches, other than go off and take a title that's higher or a head coach position. I've kept my assistant coaches pretty much.

It's a tough time in our economy right now. It's tough for guys to make a great living and be proud of the work that they do. But I think our economy will come around and I think our country is based on the pursuit of excellence. If that man is doing a great job, then doggone it, he's deserving.

I think everybody in every profession would only want someone to be given that title. He's making a great living. He's doing a great job. He deserves it. Then because at some point in time you will pursue that same excellence, and you will climb that ladder. At least that's kind of how I've seen it.

Q. Talk about your depth on the offensive line and also what do you like about Russell Shepard?

COACH MILES: The depth on the offensive line, you know, the five guys that will take the field, Ciron Black, Josh Dworaczyk, either T Bob Hebert or PJ Lonergan at center, on the right side hit, and Barksdale return, I think that gives us a great chance to be a very dominant offensive line.

Behind those guys, I think there are a number of men there that are in position to compete. Will Blackwell certainly has that ability. I mentioned two centers. At the tackle spot, we're really looking for a guy to emerge. There's a number of candidates there. I think we do have talent. But I'm waiting for that to take place. I think certainly there's some competition there and we have enough.

You also mentioned Russell Shepard. I think he's a tremendous talent. I think there's a definite challenge to our offense on how to use him, how to bring him along.

I believe firmly that he can be a quarterback. I thought he had a good spring. He's a very bright man. He has a great read. He understand secondaries. He seldom throws a ball in the wrong place by design. He knows where the ball is supposed to go.

In the spring of the year, you know, he had the right view. He checked the safety generally, the underneath coverage. Then if both routes were covered, he had a third option, which was a good option, which was run. I think his abilities will continue to improve. I think he's got a very bright future for us.

Q. I wanted to ask you about Trindon Holliday, if you could expand a little more on what he's meant to the program, the fact that he won the hundred meters, he could probably focus just on track, but he's willing to step out and play football for four years.

COACH MILES: I believe, and I've told him this, that he's a football player. I think he enjoys toughness. I think he likes to run the football. I think he does not shy from contact. I think he's been a great example of competitive edge and the ability to advance a guy that has a specific skill and get him on the field and use him.

I think he'll have a great fall. I think we're going to run him from the backfield a little bit more. I can tell you this, that he catches the public's fancy. Certainly every boy, I know my 10 year old is short, and he loves the idea that Trindon Holliday is not big. He's a great fan.

If you have to ask the people in our country who your favorite player is, and they happen to be 12 and under, they're going to come up with Trindon Holliday pretty darn quick, so...

Q. Maybe putting aside what happened this week with the coach's ballot, but the coach's poll, considering how important it is, one third of the BCS vote, do you think having staffers help do the ballot, is that enough? Do coaches owe it to everyone to put the required effort into the coach's poll?

COACH MILES: I think you have to have a staffer assist the head coach. I think it just makes great sense. I think there's an opportunity to check and review your selections. I think certainly the coach that operates in the SEC knows this conference best. I think it becomes one where the coaches from those conferences obviously have advantage in their rankings from their conference. You know, I think overall that it probably melts down to a really good, you know, very representative selection.

I think everybody can argue about it one way or the other. But I think overall, I think it's doing a good job. If you have to keep the Bowl system intact, which is a great reward for the student athlete, remember, the student athlete is really what this is about, and you allow them the opportunity to go to school and finish their semester and then participate in a Bowl, and you don't change the calendar significantly, and you come up with a representative No. 1, I think you've done your job.

I am for the playoffs. I just don't see how it works effectively. I think it's one of those issues where everyone in the room can come up with a playoff system without question, and then you bring in the presidents of the university. You said, How about the education of your student athlete? Isn't that a priority?

Then you bring in the Bowls, you say, Isn't this a priority?

You bring in the TV, and you say, Oh, my goodness. Suddenly the calendar for the student athlete becomes changes and it becomes much more difficult.

Pick the top 10 and have a five team playoff, pick the top 8, have a four game playoff. I understand those things. Until it gets done, I'm not going to complain. I think this is a system that has its advantages.

Q. Could you talk about the influence that John Chavis has had on this team, the defense, and what differences his presence there could make.

COACH MILES: Well, I think John certainly has great experience, understands the want for dominant defense. I think our guys understand that, were really looking for that when John arrived on campus. I think he will expect, and our guys will deliver. I think the strategies behind the call, I think the effort and the technique behind the play, will be improved.

Spring has happened. It's gone by. You can see marked improvement in the defense. I would expect the same this fall.

Q. Last year there were two defensive coordinators. Were there too many voices? Was there confusion, too many cooks?

COACH MILES: I really don't think "co" had anything to do with it. To me, I thought both guys complemented each other. I think there was expertise on both sides. I think both coaches are tremendously qualified guys, and both took, you know, an opportunity to be a head coach, an opportunity to be the sole coordinator, and went on. I expect they'll have great careers and do great things in football.

Q. Could you talk about what you think went wrong in the second half of the season and how much that loss at Florida, getting beat that badly, affected your team's confidence the rest of the way.

COACH MILES: Well, I think any time that you have turnovers that mark a series of games, it's the greatest defeating statistic that there is. If you had one statistic, it wouldn't be possession, time of possession, it would not be rushing yardage, it would be turnover margin. I can tell you that, you know, if you look at the year that we won, I think we were second in the country. We finished well behind that this last year.

What has to happen is it has to start fast on both sides of the ball. You can't expect one side to play so much greater than the other that it can overcome miscues.

I certainly understand what happened at the back end of last year. I suspect our team does, too, looking forward to this fall.

THE MODERATOR: Coach Miles, thank you.

COACH MILES: Thank you.

OT Ciron Black

On preseason expectations:
"I consider it a blessing. It's preseason. I still have a long season ahead of me and a lot of playing to do. There are a lot of great guys in our conference that will be coming after me. I just have to play."

On Ole Miss:
"Ole Miss is a great team. You can't take anything away from them. They had an unbelievable season year last year. They came after us. It does give us an incentive to play harder. If we go out and do what we're supposed to do, we can beat anybody in this league. But that's if we play like we're supposed to."

On deciding to not enter the NFL Draft:
"It's my life. I had to look at it. Me and my parents made a good decision. We did a lot of praying and a lot of thinking about it. I realized I had a lot more to do. I have a lot more to work on becoming a better player, a better all-around player. When I made the decision it felt like a great decision and I haven't regretted it one bit.

On LSU:
"Right now we're really hungry. We ended the season on a great note with the Chick-fil-A Bowl. That wasn't enough. We only had one game to do that and we couldn't salvage the season with that one game. We came into the summer ready to go to work, ready to run. Coach Moffitt was trying to kill us but he wasn't going to break us because we were ready for it. We're going to camp ready to play, ready to get back into the season, ready to get back into the swing of things."

On LSU QB Jordan Jefferson:
"He looked really good. He's making his reads right. He's commanding the huddle, Jarrett Lee also. Both of them are commanding the huddle and doing what they're supposed to do as quarterbacks and leaders of this offense.

On his expectations for his senior season:
"Honestly I just want to go out a winner. I want to win on the field and win off the field. I want to graduate and get my degree. I want to be a good player and an example to the younger guys on the team. Just be a great player. On the field, trying my best to be dominant, to finish blocks. To do everything I didn't do last year."

LB Jacob Cutrera

On LSU:
"I think the hunger is there more than ever. From what happened to us last year, that's not our style of play at LSU. That's not how we want to be remembered. We went through the spring hungrier than ever. The intensity was there. Everybody bought into Coach Chavis' scheme that he brought in. That carried over into summer workouts.

On LSU Defensive Coordinator John Chavis:
"Intensity. He's a fired up guy every practice. Those two and a half hours we're out there he's in your face and you'll know when you mess up. He's brought a lot of intensity and the way he does things has helped out."

On playing Florida:
"They come here. It's going to be an exciting game like always. We're excited to have them at home. They're a great team. Tim Tebow and all the other guys and that big blue wall he has in front of him is a hard thing to stop and we're going to have to prepare for that game."

On Ole Miss:
"They're a great team. Every year, it's always a close game between us. I don't remember a time that we've just blown them out, at least not in my time here. They're a great team and deserve everything that they get."

TENNESSEE VOLUNTEERS

COACH LANE KIFFIN

THE MODERATOR: Here to wrap up media days 2009, the head coach of the Tennessee Volunteers, Lane Kiffin. Coach, welcome.

COACH KIFFIN: Thanks, guys. I'm surprised you guys stuck around. I thought Coach Spurrier gave you what you wanted, told you who he voted, for everybody would leave. I was even prepared, he stole the first five minutes of my speech. I had my SEC ballot right here. I was going to have him read it right here. Quarterback, what does that say?

THE MODERATOR: Tim Tebow.

COACH KIFFIN: By the way, I voted for 11 Florida Gators for first team. We can get rid of that.

It's been a very special seven months for us. I can't imagine it going much better than it has. Starting off, putting the staff together that we were able to, our athletic department, Mike Hamilton and everybody involved really gave us the resources to do that.

As we set out to put a staff together, I wanted to make sure we had two things. We did not hire anybody who was a great recruiter, but couldn't coach, or anybody who was a great coach, and couldn't recruit. In my opening press conference, I told our fan base, Bear with me, it's going to take a while to put this staff together. We're going to have to wait for guys to get done with their NFL season, go recruit guys.

At the time, I said I thought it was the best staff in America. Now that we've had a chance to work together, see them recruit, see them coach on offense and defense, and do everything they have, it's even better than what I could have imagined. I love what they're doing. I think the results are showing, to be able to put together a top 10 recruiting class.

Our last hire was a month before signing day. We technically weren't together as a full staff but one month before signing day. We signed. No. 1 player in America in Bryce Brown, speaks volumes for our program, volumes for our assistant coach, what they can do.

That led us into spring ball. It was an extremely competitive spring ball. 15 practices of guys hitting as much as we could, practicing as long as we could. We almost went over a couple times because we tried to stop practice in a competitive atmosphere. Goal line drill, third down drill. Our players were so competitive that whoever won, the offense or defense, the other one would challenge them. We'd extend practice, keep going back out there.

That was the first time I've ever been a part of that. I've been around some special players and special teams, but to see players extend practice, it was really neat for me to see, because it meant we were doing what I set out to do, which is create an environment that the players wanted to be in, create an environment when they get done from class at 12 or 1:00, they're going, I can't wait to get to practice because I know I'm going to get better, I know I'm going to get coached, I know it's going to be an energetic practice, one I want to be part of. That was really neat to see during spring practice.

After that we've gone into this next season of recruiting, which, obviously, I can't comment about individuals, I thought it's gotten off to a great start. As I look back, especially being here today, this is kind of the fourth quarter of the day, I've been through most of the stuff already today, there's so much attention, all the questions come back to things that you've said, Do you think that it's worked.

On the way down here, there was a Sports Illustrated article that I read. It reminded me of exactly what I knew, but I hope it reminded other people, how competitive this conference it is. It is so hard to recruit in this conference, especially because you're in a part of the country that as you study things, you go about it, kids do not want to leave their own state. Guys grow up a fan in Alabama, Florida, grow up in Louisiana wanting to go to LSU. You have to do something unique and special to get those guys to come to your place.

Unfortunately, in Tennessee, as much as we love our state, we do not have a lot of great high school players there. Those are the facts, those are the stats. This article pointed out the stuff we already researched when we took the job to develop a plan. The plan had to be we had to create national attention immediately. I don't think people give you four or five year plans any more, especially in this conference. None of you guys in here are going to say, If you're not winning in year two or three, let's give him a couple more years. That's not how it works, especially down here.

We couldn't wait till the season to win games, because when you win games, that's the easiest way to get recruits. We didn't have time to wait for that. We had to put Tennessee in the national media. Do I love every single thing I've done for my seven months? No, I haven't loved having to do it. But it needed to be done, in my opinion, for us to get to where we needed to be.

The article said, Tennessee football has been the most talked about football program in all of college football through the off season. Think about that statement, guys. If you're a 17 year old kid, all the way down to eighth grade, if you've seen Tennessee's logo more than any other school, and you've seen our staff talked about, our players talked about, we're creating interest, and it's shown.

We've had an unbelievable amount of unofficial visits throughout this summer. A lot of our coaches haven't been able to go on vacation because we've had so many kids and parents saying, Something special is going on at Tennessee right now. There's no way that these players turned from the great places they were going, two players going to the University of Florida, coming off a national championship, No. 1 player in the country going to Miami, one of the top players in LSU going to LSU. Those guys turned to come to Tennessee in such a short time, there must be something special going on.

The feedback has been unbelievable from players all throughout the country of guys wanting to come and see what's going on. Like I said before, I've not loved everything that I've done, not loved everything I've had to do, but it needed to be done, in my opinion, to be able to put us where we are today and for future down the road. Because those are the kids that are going to remember that. Those ninth graders are going to remember seeing Tennessee so much. Now we need to go win some games.

This is a very important transition right now to get to what we're here to do. This staff loves to coach ball. The most fun thing for me is to go to two a days, morning practice, one of your players screw up, hot route, safety adjustment, quarterback doesn't see it, you coach it up in between on the film session, you go to walk through, you go to individual, you do it, all of a sudden in the p.m. practice, the guy makes the play, he gets better. He gives you that smile. You know that you got him better. That's what we're really here to do.

We're extremely excited to get underway here in training camp. Unfortunately we've had a number of injuries here in the off season. Three injuries to three of our top receivers. We look at that in a positive way. That gives a chance for our young guys, guys that were buried on the depth chart, a chance to come in and contribute right away and play. We won't get one of those guys back, he's gone for the year, in Rogers. The other two will probably come back. By the time we get rolling, maybe to Game 3 or Game 4, we may be a stronger receiver unit because of that.

So we're excited. We think we have a very unique first unit defense. We think they're going to be very special. I think we have a great defensive staff coaching them up. They have a special look about them in the huddle. Barring injuries, I think it will be a special group. I think we have a lot of work to do on offense. I think guys that cover us know that. We're excited about that. We're excited about taking that head on.

We got a great quarterback competition to look forward to. I'm really excited to see some of these freshmen, to throw them in, the receivers, especially these two tailbacks, throw them in the backfield with Hardesty, who is a great player.

You guys probably don't want questions. Last thing of the day. Flights to take off. No questions?

Q. Now that you're getting to the season, you said you didn't love everything you said or have done. Getting to the season, is it time to let the product do the talking for me and I'm going to tone down the bravado a bit? Do you anticipate now it's time to play the game and this is the product we have?

COACH KIFFIN: Well, it's not because of the timing of the games. That's not what it's about now, about it's not time to say something, now you have to back it up. That's not it at all. It's part of the plan. It's part of the timing of things. Now that we got out there, have this energy about our program nationally, that's what we needed to do.

So, yeah, does it tone down? Naturally it tones down because there's something to focus on.

What else were you going to focus on? There weren't any games being played. The only thing to focus on was what was going on in the off season. Now there's real ball to focus on.

We're real excited about getting this season underway, looking forward to the opener. We have a ton of work to do. We're just excited to get to the first day of practice.

Q. Eric Berry is arguably your best athlete. Why not line him up at quarterback and take your chances?

COACH KIFFIN: A couple reasons. First thing, I think that's not fair to him. Eric most likely won't be back a year from now. So to take Eric, who is not remember, he's going into his third year, but it's not a third year of the same defense. This is the first year of this new defense for him to learn. If you take all that practice time away from Eric, who is a great leader for us, who is a great player for us, who is potentially a top five pick in the NFL, you put him over there in the offense, he loses all that practice time at defense, you're over there trying to run some stuff with him at quarterback, number one, that's not fair to him. Number two, you're not developing your other guys.

This isn't just about today. We have to look for our future. We need to develop our other players at the positions they're supposed to be at. You hinder his development at defense, which is not fair to him, and you hinder the development of our offense as well.

Q. I'm talking about him playing defense, balance it out. If you're all about getting attention for Tennessee, you're going to lure more quarterbacks playing him there than maybe somebody else, if you believe he's the best athlete on the team.

COACH KIFFIN: What I'm saying is you are hindering his development. During practice, you put him over there at quarterback for those plays, you have to spend a lot of time in the meeting room with him, on the practice field with him, why he's not over there with Monte Kiffin working on his drops. He's gonna play multiple positions on defense for him. You're going to hinder his development over there.

It would be an interesting conversation were we going into our third year and he had our defense down pat, playing it for two years. Then I think it could possibly be a different conversation.

Q. You mentioned the three receivers that are injured. What does that mean for Nu'Keese Richardson?

COACH KIFFIN: He was going to get a great opportunity to play anyway. This gives him more of a chance to play. In the reports downstairs from him working out, he's had a great off season. He's been there for probably five weeks now, I think. Has done well academically. Really been working hard down there. Gained some weight. We look for big things from Nu'Keese. Even if those guys were healthy, we were looking for that. This is more of an opportunity for him stepping up.

Q. Are you worried you maybe set him up a little bit with his highly publicized recruiting?

COACH KIFFIN: You have to know the right people to do that with. If you know Nu'Keese, his personality, just like Eric, there's a lot of players that you would not want to give a Heisman, promote for the Heisman going into their junior year because they couldn't handle it. Eric can handle that.

Nu'Keese and Bryce are two people, I talk about them more than any other freshmen, because of their personalities and their confidence, their demeanor, swagger, I think those two people can handle it. I'm not worried about having set those two guys up. I think it's good for them to have all the attention on them because they can handle it.

Q. Steve Spurrier said he actually did not fill out his ballot. Somebody did it for him. He just approved it. Did you actually fill yours out? If not, who did?

COACH KIFFIN: Yeah, because of not being as familiar with the conference, I had some of the guys around us help me, some guys that are in the office that have been around the conference more. They helped me fill it out. But I was obviously a big part of it.

Q. You mentioned there's no four or five year plan any more. Do you feel pressure to kind of win immediately because of that?

COACH KIFFIN: Well, I don't feel any pressure because we apply so much pressure ourselves. I think our staff is so competitive and our expectations are so high of us as coaches and of our players that I don't feel anybody adds any pressure to that.

But we know what conference we're in. We know what school we're at. That school, the people around us, expect us to win. They expect us to win a lot of games. And I love it. I love being a part of that. I would not want to be somewhere where the expectations are down because that's not who I am. I want to be around people that want to operate at the highest level and be in the most competitive conference and be at the top of it every single year.

I love that our fan base thinks that way.

Q. The commissioner made a point the other day talking about secondary violations, that the league takes them seriously. I wanted your reaction to that. Do you think coaches around the conference have gotten that message from the league?

COACH KIFFIN: I think we definitely have. I can only speak on my behalf. I would say this: we've had a number of violations and I don't think it's a crazy amount comparable to other schools. I want to make sure you guys understand this. Not one of the violations that occurred to us was something we planned, set out to say We're going to create a violation. I don't think any of the violations we had gained us an advantage in recruiting. We did not set out to do something on a specific plan of creating violations to gain an advantage.

We are under a great effort as a staff to make sure we don't have any more. Sometimes they happen. I think what happened to us a little bit, too, is unfortunately of our 10 coaches, nine assistants and myself, five of those coaches last year were in the NFL. So when you come back, we probably weren't as educated as some other schools on the little rules, how you interpret those. We did not do that on purpose at all. I can assure you that it's not our plan to continue that way.

Q. One of the sore spots for a lot of fans last year was the lack of use of Brandon Warren. Can you talk about how he's doing in the new offense, given all the injuries to the receivers?

COACH KIFFIN: Yeah, Brandon had a really good spring. He had been playing tight end the year before, kind of a hybrid tight end position last year. We moved him to receiver now. He's lost some weight. Really had a good spring out there. Had a good spring game, did a number of things. He could be one of those guys, because of injuries, that he even gets to play more. We're excited about him.

Q. What would you say to sexual assault victims who ask why you would recruit someone who was convicted of such a crime?

COACH KIFFIN: I think you have to look at the incident. It was a very unfortunate incident. It was something that happened, I believe, five years ago now. It's something that he learned from. It was something that he was involved in. I think if you researched it enough I'm not going to get into it in front of you guys, but if you research it enough, really knew the exact story of what happened from a number of sources, I think it's different than what was portrayed in the media.

But it's a very sensitive subject and one we took very serious. This was something we looked very long and hard at before we did it. This is not something we signed on signing day. This is somebody I knew well before signing day. It took months to figure this out. I think in most of these situations you would have to see a football coach or program fight for this player to get into the university. This was not that case at all.

Daniel Hood was accepted to the University of Tennessee having nothing to do with football and he was put on academic scholarship by the University of Tennessee having nothing to do with football. He could have come to the University of Tennessee, enrolled on academic scholarship even if he never played football. I think that's a powerful statement about them researching it, as well.

Q. Your dad coached a lot of great defensive players in his career. What is his assessment of Eric Berry's potential?

COACH KIFFIN: I think he said to the media the other day, he made a statement, I don't know how he couldn't be the first pick of the draft. I think that's a pretty powerful statement about Eric.

But he really has been tirelessly watching so much film from last year, my dad has. He continues to get so excited about using Eric in different ways. He's not had a safety over the years that he's been able to play at nickel. They asked me to compare Taylor Maze and Eric the other day. I said they're really different because Taylor isn't a guy you could play at nickel. A bigger safety that couldn't play guys man to man, receivers. There aren't very many guys like that. There aren't very many guys in the NFL like that.

To have Eric, a guy that could come down and play nickel as well as be a safety, I think NFL teams are going to fall in love with him.

Q. Is there anything in recruiting you'd like to see some of the rules improved, whether it's early signing period, spring recruiting, time that you have as coaches to get to know that the players you want to bring into your program, anything that comes to mind you'd like to see that could help you do your job better?

COACH KIFFIN: Well, the biggest thing for me, I wish, personally, is the head coach could go out in spring. I think we really suffer from that, especially because it's hard for players to get to our campus compared to some of the other schools in the SEC. They get more players to their campus because of their location. I don't get to go out and see the guys. In recruiting, what is missed so much is the evaluation process. There's three parts. There's the evaluation, then there's the recruiting. Once you evaluate who you want, then there's the recruiting to get them, then there's the development of them. Five star players, top classes, you look four years later, the team is not winning, because the development of 'em.

So when I can't get out, I can't really do the research for the evaluation near as well. I'd love to sit at jamborees in Florida all day long, be able to watch the guys warm up, to learn about them. So to take that away from the head coaches, I think we suffer a lot from it because I know I'd be out every minute of every day.

Q. Could you talk about how conducive you think your offense is to getting young guys on the field, how much of a priority that will be this year? Ed Orgeron's role in your program?

COACH KIFFIN: I think it excites players in high school. Goes back to Southern Cal. We had freshmen All Americans at the skill position we were able to plug in right away. That's because we started coaching them the day we signed them. We started sending them DVDs, playbooks, until waiting till they got to us. Once we had them, we found out what could they do really well and make them do that great.

We don't try to make freshmen come in. We didn't try to make Reggie come in, or Mike Williams come in, or Lyndell come in. We found what could they do extremely well and let's focus on that, and then eventually as they get older do everything else.

It's a philosophy that we use to take a guy like Nu'Keese. What can he do great? He can do this, this, and this. Don't try to make him do everything. He'll never get really good at anything if you make him do that. So I think it's an approach that helps guys play right away, and I think it will pay off for us this year.

Secondly, with Ed Orgeron, he's extremely valuable to us because I really think that he's kind of the passion of our program, that our players and our coaches feed off of his energy. This is someone that is a tireless worker. Between him and Monte, they sleep at the office. I don't even know if they sleep there's so much. They're on different schedules. Ed is the morning person, so Ed's up at 4, has his three Red Bulls by 4:20. Monte is still asleep because he's up till 2:30.

Between the two of them, our players feel so much energy and passion from them. I can't imagine there's a better recruiter out there than Ed, if you go back and look back at guys that he's recruited over the years and developed once again, you go back to hiring recruiters and coaches, look at the defensive linemen, go all the way back to Miami, then USC, then all the players he recruited, all the great players that are at Ole Miss right now that he recruited there. Unbelievable job of evaluating the players, then also getting them there.

Q. You talked earlier about being able to put together such a great coaching staff. I think you have the highest paid group of assistants in the country. Talk about being able to do that and raising the bar, how much assistants are making these days, especially in the SEC.

COACH KIFFIN: Well, I'll probably take heat for this, but I really think you have to spend money to make money. When you go out, get those coaches, that's going to translate into recruiting, winning, ticket sales, your team doing better, I don't think you ever ask those questions again. The way I look at it, I go back to this. Does anybody ever write anymore how much they paid Nick Saban at Alabama?

When he was hired at Alabama, every article was I can't believe how much we paid Nick Saban at Alabama. Well, guess what, nobody writes about it any more because they win. So when we start winning, nobody is going to write about how much we pay our assistant coaches because, in turn, we're going to make a lot more money by them being there. I don't think it's a big deal.

And I took a lot less so we'd have money for them (smiling).

Q. Somebody who coached in the NFL, how do you think Tim Tebow's game will translate into the NFL and what kind of career you see him having?

COACH KIFFIN: I think I have a unique view on that. When Tim was in the high school, we recruited him at SC. I was the national recruiter. I would go down and see him. Went to his family's house, spent the day there. I should have known at that point we were in trouble because I did pull in and he had a Florida Gators mailbox right there as you pull into his farm right there. I should have known we weren't getting him at that point.

But to watch him practice, I was sitting in there with some other college coaches. One of the coaches said, I don't know his throwing motion, maybe he's a fullback or something. I look at the guy, Do you watch the film? Do you watch him? The guy is a great competitor. He wins every game he plays. He makes every throw. Is every throw a perfect spiral? Who cares. It's just like a home run hitter. Do you really care how he comes to the plate and his stance, how he swings? What are the results.

I think it's going to be the same thing. I think there's going to be a million articles written after Tim has a great year, and I would think with all the great players, they'll win another national championship, he'll win a Heisman. That wasn't a joke. I was serious about that. I really believe that. I think the same thing will be written about him.

Well, I don't know his throwing motion, can he play in the NFL, some people will pass on him in the draft in the NFL. He'll prove them all wrong, he'll go and win Super Bowls there.

Q. I know you said Eric Berry has a potential top five pick. Do you feel that way about Tebow?

COACH KIFFIN: I don't know how he isn't. If you want to build a program, and you want a quarterback, you want a winner. Here is a guy who came in, all he's done in his whole career, no matter where he's been, he wins games, you know. He won the state championship in high school. Now he's winning national championships, winning three out of four national championships. What more do you want for a leader?

A guy that makes a statement after you lose a game by a point, We'll never lose again, and backs it up. I promise you, if they ever lose a game again, it won't be because of him. If I have a top five pick in the NFL, that's the guy I want.

Q. With these calculated episodes to bring publicity to Tennessee, what kind of reception did you get in Destin when you met with the other coaches, specifically maybe Urban Meyer?

COACH KIFFIN: First of all, I think when you talk about these calculated risks to bring energy and attention to your program, I think that there is some negatives that come to that, some things you have to have your facts ready for. There was a recruit in my office. His mom was sitting on the couch. She said to me, Well, we really like everything about Tennessee. But another coach told us, why would you ever go to Tennessee, it's a renegade program. They're going to become the next Miami, that Miami used to be.

I sat there and I looked at her. I said, To me, if I'm evaluating a program, I want to know about facts, okay? What I've done is created this perception we're a renegade program, or that's what coaches use against us, let's talk facts, okay? We've been there for seven months. We've had one full semester of school, okay? A renegade program would never have the largest GPA jump in over four years for a football program in the school history, would not have the highest GPA in over four years. Over eight semesters, our football program had the highest GPA of any football program there. We've been there over seven months and had zero arrests. To me that speaks volume about discipline, what's going on in our program. I think we're as disciplined a program as there is in the whole country.

Back to Urban Meyer. He was very nice in the meetings.

Q. Could you talk about some of the guys in the previous coaching staff who didn't get a lot of playing time, Chris Donald at linebacker, trying to take advantage of starting with a clean slate with a new coaching staff.

COACH KIFFIN: Yeah, I think when coaching staff changes, it benefits players sometimes. The first meeting we had with our players, I told them, I don't care what you've done before, good, bad, indifferent. I don't care if you're a two star or five star recruit. None of that matters. We're going to play the best players, no matter what year you are, no matter where you come from. A lot of guys, that's been great for. Because it's natural in the coaching staff, guys get buried after a couple years on a staff for whatever reason. They don't really have a chance. So the change gives them that.

We've seen a number of guys who may be people that cover us aren't as familiar with because they've been buried on depth charts, step up. I think we'll see it again. We have to release a depth chart, but I promise you, when you read our depth chart right now, it means nothing. We just have to do that.

How do I know, over these last six weeks of working out, when I'm not allowed to watch them, how do I know which guys have passed guys up? We don't really have a depth chart. Eric Berry is a starter. Outside of that, we have 21 jobs open. It will be a really interesting fall camp.

Q. You've talked about, and Lance has talked, about building a fence around Memphis and owning Memphis. I know you can't talk specifics, but with Keiwone Malone committed to Alabama, Macklin committed to LSU, did you know it would be that hard?

COACH KIFFIN: Well, I can't talk individually on them. Before you make a statement about whether we're winning or losing recruits, I think you need to know who we were really going after. That's really as far as I can go on that answer.

I think wait till signing day happens. Then I think go back and evaluate, are we getting the players we really went after.

Q. How did the other SEC coaches receive you in Destin? When you flew down there to hire Coach Orgeron, did you think you needed to do that? Could you not have gotten him on the phone?

COACH KIFFIN: First, the SEC meetings. I thought the reception was fine. I think that you have a group of 12 people that understand that each job is different, okay? I'm hired different than all those 11 coaches, okay? I have a different athletic director than they do. I have a different president than they do. I have different expectations upon me that this is the way they want something done. So that may be different than their AD wants it done.

They may be in a totally different program. They may be in a program where they have a hundred great players 50 miles from their campus. That's pretty easy to do. You don't have to do some of the things I have to do. I think it's very different. I think that coaches understand that and respect that we all have very high profile jobs we all have to do in different ways.

The second part about Orgeron, any time in recruiting, just like recruiting players face to face is the most valuable thing you can do, I really probably had 300, 400 phone conversations with him before that, even things on why I was here and he wasn't here and he didn't know if he was coming, things on recruiting around the conference, different things.

He still knew a lot of personnel, because he's only been out for a year. He still knew a lot of the high school kids, kids for us to go after. I was in a lot of conversation with him. He was really wavering, Sean Payton is a great coach, great to work for, LSU was getting in it. So much family from Louisiana. LSU was throwing a ton of money at him. We went in person to get him.

My dad and myself got on a plane, went down to Destin, made him sign it. We weren't trusting him just to give us his word.

Q. Eddie Gran joined your staff with a sterling reputation for recruiting in South Florida. What is your recruiting strategy down there as far as competing with the Gators?

COACH KIFFIN: Well, first of all, Eddie Gran, he has absolutely blown me away as a coach and a recruiter. I knew some about him. He'd come highly recommended. Will Muschamp called me. Eddie wasn't on the top of my list, I didn't know anything about him when I was putting together a staff. I kept hearing about him in recruiting. Will Muschamp called me and told my, I promise you, I don't call about coaches ever. If I got an SEC head job, the first guy I would hire is Eddie Gran on either side of the ball, because he's a great man, a great recruiter and great coach.

I still thank him to this day for doing that. He is. He's unbelievable. What he did with Nu'Keese. I told the story before. It is phenomenal to have one month before signing day and have a kid committed to the powerful Florida Gators off of a national championship and to be a receiver to go there in the state of Florida and just to get him to come on a trip, I was shocked.

Then he gets him on a trip and he gets him to sign I think speaks volumes of him. He's gonna do a great job down there for us.

It's obviously a very hard place for us to recruit because of the great tradition of Florida State, Florida and Miami, because of having to travel to us. So it makes it really difficult. There will be a billboard going up there in the next month that I think you'll be excited to see, that will give you something to write about that will help us, too.

Q. A billboard?

COACH KIFFIN: Uh huh. I'm not going to give you any more than that. Got to give you something to look forward to.

Q. You received some flack about your comments about Pahokee. How did you patch up that situation, if you have? Are you allowed back in the school?

COACH KIFFIN: Yes, we are. The Pahokee comments, Urban Meyer comments, are at the exact same event. After this right here, I'm going to move on from this, okay, after today, because it's time to get to football. I'm going to explain it to you in this setting.

The setting that it was in was Tennessee. I've said the statement before. I know when y'all watched it on TV, it looks completely different. It looks like I went in front of the national media and made these statements about Urban and Florida. It was a group of Tennessee boosters the morning after signing day of our Tennessee boosters at an energetic breakfast. I made some over the course of the two hours I was up there or something, I made two statements, one about Pahokee energizing the crowd, one about Urban, that if you were there, anybody I talked to that was there, including people in our athletic department at the time, thought nothing of it because they were laughing and joking. It was just amongst our people.

Well, like anything nowadays, there was one camera there. The one camera there happened to pick it up and it became a national story. Looks like I went in front of a setting like this and made those statements.

I've apologized to the commissioner. I've apologized to Urban, to Jeremy. I don't know what else to do on that situation. I think we've moved forward.

As you noticed from my comments, all the time from the minute I got hired, I have great respect for Florida, what they've done there. I would think Florida is not worried one bit about us. We're 5 7, they're the powerful Gators. We're just trying to play in the same conference as them.

Q. You've mentioned Ed Orgeron's success on recruiting. He has a big hand in what Ole Miss has now. You worked with him at Southern Cal. He's not the most easy guy to understand sometimes when he gets talking. What is his success in being such a good recruiter? What's the basis for how good he is as a recruiter?

COACH KIFFIN: I think it's the relentless effort, the relationships that he develops with everybody around the recruit, the coach, the parents, the aunts, the uncles. He's just so relentless. He doesn't take no for an answer.

Marsalis Teague was a receiver DB that was committed to Florida from Tennessee. So when we got there, we got on him, he wasn't committed yet. Ed wasn't there yet. We couldn't get him. He committed to Florida. He said, I really appreciate everything, but I'm going to go to Florida. Ed had just gotten there. Ed got on the phone and told him, You're going to sign with Tennessee. Go ahead and announce that you're committing, but you'll sign here.

He came into our staff meeting. This shows you his confidence. He put it on the board in front of the whole staff. We got some young coaches that didn't know Ed, aren't used to this confidence. He put on the board, I guarantee every single one of you Marsalis Teague will sign with the University of Tennessee on signing day. That shows you the confidence.

From that day, he did everything he could do to make sure he signed and turned him away from Florida. He's relentless the way he goes about it. Anywhere he's been, the recruitment and development of the players has been phenomenal.

Q. In Louisiana, back in signing day, there was a lot of speculation about Janzen Jackson, seemingly an 11th hour decision to sign with Tennessee. People wondering if his dad, Lance, who is a secondary coach, was promised a job somewhere down the line in the program, things like that. Can you relate how he came to sign with Tennessee and what, if any, role Ed Orgeron played in that?

COACH KIFFIN: There's no truth to that. Lance Guidry is his father. He coaches at Miami of Ohio now. There's no truth he was promised a job or something. Anybody who said that, that's just that, to me, is a typical reason why when people recruit so well, all of a sudden people want to accuse them that they're doing something wrong or accuse them of cheating because they got beat. There's nothing to that.

Janzen Jackson was a great player that he had been committed to LSU, I think, for 11 straight months. We just went down there, brought him on a trip. We showed him. I think the biggest reason he came to us was not me or Ed Orgeron or Frank Wilson, I think it was Monte Kiffin. He wants to coach someday when he's done playing, Janzen does. As you guys know, that's not easy to do.

Five star players don't leave the state of Louisiana. I think the stat is over seven years, there's two five star players not go to LSU from the state of Louisiana. One was Joe McKnight came to us at SC, and Janzen was the second.

What he did, when he came, I think he fell in love with my dad. I think he saw how good he can be in that system, how much football he can learn underneath my father. Then also how that's going to translate into coaching, because of the coaching tree of guys that have learned from him. I think it was a combination of those two things why he decided to switch.

Q. Can you talk about how your NFL experience might translate down to the collegiate level. Anything that doesn't translate down so well?

COACH KIFFIN: Yeah, I think what translates the best, when you've been in the NFL, I think is that you understand the evaluation process that the NFL uses with being in the draft rooms, being at the combine, being in all those interviews, that you understand that you can help your kids in that.

So we prepare our kids already. A lot of the off season training that we do, we're training them for the exact drills they do at the combine because it's kind of a give and take. Our players give so much to us. We want to give back to them. We give back to them by preparing them for the NFL. So we even get to a point whereas they get ready, we prepare them for those interviews.

What happens is they all hire agents, the agents try to get them ready in a couple months. Why not spend three or four years getting ready for it? We really try to help our kids, almost like a minor league system, prepare for that day for their draft day.

So I don't think, you know, there's a whole lot of other stuff that you bring down. I think that's a very powerful thing that you bring down.

The obvious one is the X's and O's. The NFL is the highest level of X's and O's. I don't think anybody can disagree with that. That's what you do all year long there. You don't go on the road recruiting. You do football.

Whenever you bring people down, I think usually as you study things, I was getting ready to interview for the Tennessee job, I was looking at the USA Today on the airplane when I was flying to interview, I was looking at the conferences, and Pete Carroll and USC was first in the PAC 10, Nick Saban and Alabama was first in the SEC, and Butch Davis was first in North Carolina. I don't think that's a coincidence that those are all NFL head coaches because they bring those X's and O's down. The question always is, can that NFL coach come down and recruit, can he relate to players. That's always the question. But I don't ever think it's an X and O question. I think you see it the other way. You see college guys to the NFL and they struggle X and O wise when they get there.

Q. I'm sure you had a smile when some people wondered, how does a 69 year old guy going to connect with 20 year old kids. Eric Berry said the energy your dad shows has blown them away. Have you gotten him to slow down yet?

COACH KIFFIN: No, we really haven't. He is 69. But he says it all the time, 69 going on 49. That he was actually born on a leap year, so he really only has a birthday every four years. He has all these excuses why he's so young. It's true. He's so passionate about the sport, about coaching. I finally told a story the other day, I kicked him out of the office last week. We've been on vacation for three weeks. I see him in the office every single day. I finally kick him out, sent him to Tampa. My mom is calling me, telling me, will you please send him on vacation. I haven't seen him.

So I send him to Tampa. I think he's on vacation. Then I find out that Tampa Bay Bucs set up an office for him, this is a true story. He's going in every single day in the morning, not coming home still night. My mom calls, says, He ain't been here one time. He's not here for breakfast, he's not here till after dinner. He goes into the Bucs. They setup this office, and they streamline all the film from SEC film for all the opponents. They streamline them all into the Tampa facility. He was still working down there every day.

My point of the story is that shows the passion of the guy. Doesn't matter about age. There's some 25 year olds that can't coach because they're too lazy, don't have enough energy, then there's 69 year olds that can coach because they have great energy.

Q. What was the deal with the turnover with Mark Smith as your strength coach and David Reaves handling your quarterbacks? What do you see him bringing to that position?

COACH KIFFIN: Mark Smith was hired as our strength coach, was with us for about six months. Mark did a very good job. He established a lot of discipline in our program. I really liked some of the things he did.

Anything in our program, everything I say to you guys, every decision that I make, is to make us better on a championship level. I felt that we got to a point that we were plateauing a little bit. I felt that I had a chance to improve us in that area, just like I'll improve us in any area, if you go to switch players at some point, you know, on a depth chart during the season.

So we had a chance to hire Aaron Ausmus. I felt our program was not progressing to the championship level that it should. I feel when we recruit players, when you come here, we're gonna give you the highest level of coaching on offenses and defenses. We have the best recruiting system there is as far as evaluation. I didn't feel we were getting that at that point with our strength program. I didn't think it was fair to our players. It's my job to make hard decisions. That was a very hard decision.

But you do that for your players and everybody else around.

David Reaves, quarterbacks. I oversee our quarterbacks. Spend a lot of time with our quarterbacks. We also have Jim Chaney who developed Drew Brees and Kyle Orton at Purdue. David does a lot of our individual work with our quarterbacks. He's still young. He's 30 years old. Come from a great coach in Coach Spurrier. We'll continue to develop him.

Q. The reconciliation between John Majors in Tennessee appears to be complete. He's got some speaking engagements and appearances at UT functioning coming up. What has been your role in that?

COACH KIFFIN: Well, I think it was a lot. I tried to get Coach Majors back around. I think he told me it was the first time he'd walked in the facility in 14 years, not been to a practice facility in 14 years. He's a huge part of our tradition. Coach Majors is not just a great coach, you know, some of the younger people don't know, he was a runner up for the Heisman Trophy, was a great player. To have him around, have him as just a huge brick of Tennessee football has been extremely important to me.

He came to our practice. It was so neat to see him at practice. He was so energized by the way our coaches coached, the energy we had, the intensity of our staff that he came off the field and said, You know, even though I've not been to Tennessee practices for years, he goes around the country, goes to practices, and he goes, That's the best organized, energetic practice I've seen in, I think he said, 17 years, or something like that. That's a powerful statement from a legend, from a Hall of Famer like that.

I brought him up to our staff and I put him at the head chair and I asked him, Will you tell that to our staff? For me to relay that, it's not near as powerful as him relaying it.

We had a pretty busy day. So I was thinking he was going to relay that message about what a great job they did in about a minute or two, get to move on. He spent about 45 minutes. He told us how good we were. But then he also, as a great coach would do, he went through each guy and told them what they could do better. He told our linebacker coach how he could make his drills better, our DB coach drill. I could see how he's a great coach. He sat at our one practice and had something for each of our coaches to get better at.

THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you.

SAF Eric Berry

THE MODERATOR: Eric, if you would like to start with an opening comment.

ERIC BERRY: UT is very excited about this upcoming season. Looking forward to camp also. We've been working very hard in the weight room, on the field as well. We're just looking forward to get this show on the road.

Q. Eric, I know you played quarterback in high school. Could you handle a hundred snaps playing 50 maybe at quarterback in any capacity and then playing defense? Physically could you handle that?

ERIC BERRY: I believe I could. But right now I think I'm helping my team out the most being well and fresh on defense. I think that's where I have the big contribution to my team, is at safety. If they do want to do that, then we'll talk about it. But right now that's where I'm helping them at.

Q. You're in the process of learning this new defense. You're an All American safety. How much do you have to learn? How much of the defense do you know right now?

ERIC BERRY: I know a lot of the defense right now. It's just kind of tough to get the terminology, the different names of the defenses, getting those things down. Coach Chavis and Monte's defense are very similar, but it's just the terminology in different situations. So that's the tough part about it.

Q. Could you talk about what the LSU guys can look forward to with John Chavis, how he'll motivate and drive them?

ERIC BERRY: They just need to look forward to a great coach. They couldn't have a better defensive coordinator down there. Coach Chavis is a very intense guy. He knows what he wants in a defense and what he wants out of his players. That's what he's gonna expect from them.

But they should have a lot of fun playing for Coach Chavis.

Q. Can you talk about the differences in the defensive scheme from Chavis to Monte, and also you were the leading vote getter in the media's pre season All SEC Team. Does that put any more pressure on you this year to perform even more?

ERIC BERRY: To the Monte and Chavis question, they're both very similar as coaches. As far as their intensity for the game, their knowledge of the game, they were just on two different levels. One was in the NFL, one was in college. But they are very great coaches. Very knowledgeable of the game. Both of them are A pluses in my book.

As far as the question about having to step my game up, I feel like that's any season. Even if this Heisman stuff wasn't going on, I always look back and see what I can improve from last season. I'm always looking to see what I can make better in my game. I always go in working like I'm coming in like a freshman, trying to earn a spot. That's my mentality. So that hasn't changed.

Q. What do you think of the whole Heisman campaign? Did they talk to you beforehand? Were you all for it?

ERIC BERRY: Just hearing that they wanted to push the campaign for me, I mean, that made me feel very good. I really love the UT staff for doing that for me. I mean, it's been fun. They notified me of it. I was all for it. I do appreciate that from them. It's pretty cool. I like this deal.

Q. What is your best Monte Kiffin story or how can you best describe Monte Kiffin?

ERIC BERRY: I know he got tired of recruiting. Coming from Tampa Bay, the NFL, he really didn't know the recruiting side of college football. He was talking to me about how he was tired of flying. He didn't want to fly. He's like, I just want to get on the grass and coach, E. That's all I want to dol I want to get on the field and coach you guys. I don't want to do any more recruiting.

He was kind of spilling his heart to me. We both really laughed about it. It was really funny.

Q. I'm asking all the players here this week if there was another coach in the SEC that you could see yourself playing for, who might that coach be?

ERIC BERRY: Talking about a coach right now?

Q. Right.

ERIC BERRY: I really can't see one, to be honest with you. Coach Kiffin is all I know right now. Phillip Fulmer and Coach Kiffin. Those two guys. I mean, Coach Kiffin has got our back, no matter what, as you can see. That's all we want out of a coach. That's what we respect. That's what we play for.

Q. What do you think of Lane's colorful collection of comments this off season?

ERIC BERRY: I mean, we were 5 7 last year. We just thought we were in this thing by ourselves last year, not having anybody on our side. We were 5 7. So when he comes in and says that he has confidence in us, basically, and saying that he has faith in us, I mean, the team went crazy.

Man, he really does believe in us. Just seeing somebody having that type of faith in us after a 5 7 season, who wouldn't want to play for him? Who wouldn't want to put theirself on the line for him?

That's what we're doing right now in this off season. That's what we're going to do in the season.

Q. Speaking of the Heisman thing, do you take inspiration from Charles Woodson? If you win it, you would be that type of player.

ERIC BERRY: Yeah, that would be cool, being put in the same category as Charles Woodson. But I'd rather be in the same category as USC and Florida with the national championship, the SEC championship. That's a bigger accomplishment in my eyes. That's what we're trying to get done.

Q. Coach Kiffin made a few ripples around the league. Did he kind of tell you that was his plan? He said it was somewhat calculated to get Tennessee's name out there? Did he tell you guys? What was your reaction to it?

ERIC BERRY: He didn't tell us directly, but he told us, Look here, guys, I got your back, no matter what. No matter the situation, no matter what you went through last year, we're not gonna dwell on that. We're just gonna focus on what we need to get done this year.

I guess him saying those comments kind of proved it to us, that, man, he really does have faith in us. It's unfortunate that he stepped on some toes, but it did a lot for our team, how much respect we do have for Lane Kiffin.

Q. What do you think about your little brother committing without even playing high school football yet?

ERIC BERRY: I'm excited about it. I know my brother better than anybody else. Just to hear he wants to come to Tennessee. He loves Tennessee. He already loves Coach Kiffin and the staff. I'm very excited to see him, I guess, carry on the Orange bloodline, see what he has to offer when he comes to UT.

Q. Do you have any personal relationship at all with Taylor Maze? Have you seen him play? Can you compare and contrast your two styles of playing the same position?

ERIC BERRY: I've watched a lot of film on Taylor Maze, to be honest with you, simply for the fact we run the same defense as those guys. I've been learning a lot of things from him. Really been seeing what I could do as far as this system that Coach Kiffin has brought in, seeing what I can learn from him.

I'd like to think that he's a big, I guess you could say, freak or monster, to be 230 and still be that fast, still that athletic. He kind of reminds me of Sean Taylor. He's that type of guy. I kind of like to think of myself as (indiscernible). Those two guys I think are pretty good safeties. We're two good safeties, but he's a great safety in my eyes.

Q. As good as your defense was last year, with the addition of Monte Kiffin, with the struggles offensively, the injuries they've had, is there pressure on you knowing that you may have to carry this team the first third of the season or so?

ERIC BERRY: No, it's no pressure at all. I mean, we're a family. The offense takes care of the defense, and the defense takes care of the offense, no matter what's going on. There's been times where we couldn't stop offenses. Our offense comes in and keeps scoring points. Perfect example was when Erik Ainge was here, we went into four overtimes with Kentucky. They kept fighting and scoring. Likewise, on D where we got to hold the guys, get our offense a chance to score.

Q. Obviously Tennessee has a long history of winning. Last season wasn't so great. Do you feel like you have to have success immediately in order to help Coach Kiffin out and get back to those winning ways in order for him to maybe secure his job there for a long time?

ERIC BERRY: Yeah, I feel like we're the class, the new era of Coach Kiffin. This is the first impression, or whatever, that he has on the nation. We've been working really hard to make him look good to everyone else, you know. He's been working hard, just been in the office grinding, doing all types of work, long hours and everything. We're just trying to make that impression on everyone in the nation, just do it for ourselves, too, to get back to the SEC championship.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

RB Montario Hardesty

"The new coaching staff has brought a lot of excitement to our program. The fans are very exciting about the upcoming season. It's been very easy to buy into the new program. It's good for our program to be on TV. as much as we have. Lane Kiffin had a plan for our program from the moment he came in. I think being on TV. can't hurt us. It just brings more excitement for the upcoming year. The coaching staff stands up for us and we're behind them 100 percent."

"I'm very excited about our offensive line. Our first unit guys are all veterans, they played well in the spring, and you can see them continue to improve. I think this new system will be a great asset for us this fall. I can't wait to get the taste of 5-7 out of our mouth. Let's go get some W's under our belt."

"Coach Graham brings a lot of energy to the meeting room. It's exciting. He's had so many players in the league; seven or eight backs. He wants you to fit into everything we do on the field. He's teaching you to be a better person. It's great to have him as my coach."