EXCERPTS FROM LANE KIFFIN’S INTRODUCTORY PRESS CONFERENCE AS RAIDERS HEAD COACH:
“We are prepared to hire the best staff in football we can hire. We realize there are great players on this roster right now and I’m very excited about the roster we have coming back. We will always look to add seats to that (roster) but we are really excited about what we have coming back on the offense and defense. I WILL BRING AN EXPLOSIVE, POWERFUL OFFENSE TO THIS FRANCHISE. We will utilize our skilled players and our big time players in the best ways. We will get them the football.”
OAKLAND RAIDERS OFFENSIVE RANKINGS OUT OF 32 NFL TEAMS UNDER LANE KIFFIN:
PASSING RUSHING SCORING TOTAL OFFENSE
2007 31ST, 164.4 6TH, 130.4 23RD, 17.7 25TH, 294.8
2008, 4 GMES 27TH, 153.0 5TH, 155.0 23RD, 19.5 20TH, 308.0

“Yes, I spoke to a lot of people about this job. Some people that are very close to me, Pete Carroll, Monte Kiffin, Jeff Tedford, were the three people I talked to first. EVERY ONE OF THEM SAID THAT IT WAS A TREMENDOUS OPPORTUNITY TO GO TO THAT ORGANIZATION AND WORK FOR AL DAVIS; AND YOU GO UP THERE AND GET THAT JOB AND BE THE NEXT HEAD COACH OF THE OAKLAND RAIDERS.
EXERPTS FROM LETTER SENT BY NFL TO LANE KIFFIN 3 MONTH AFTER HE WAS NAMED RAIDERS HEAD COACH RE: VIOLATION OF OFF-SEASON WORKOUT RULES:
After reviewing the videotapes of your workouts, we have concluded that your Club violated the “no live contact” rule during the OTA days in question. Voluntary off-season workout programs are intended to provide training, teaching and physical conditioning for players. The intensity and tempo of drills should be at a level conducive to learning, with player safety as the highest priority, and not at a level where one player is in a physical contest with another.

In addition, please be advised that any subsequent violation by your CLUB of the off-season workout rules during the 2007 League Year will result in the forfeiture of a fourth round draft selection in the next draft in which the Club has such a selection.

EXCERPTS FROM KIFFIN’S EMPLOYMENT CONTRACT WITH THE OAKLAND RAIDERS:
Kiffin shall devote all of his working time, talents and special knowledge to the position of Head Football Coach and to the training, scouting, coaching, counseling and conditioning of football players employed by Club; to the evaluation of opponents and other NFL teams; to the evaluation of college players, free agents, and potential football players; and to the direction, management and supervision of the football staff all subject to the direction and supervision of the General Partner of Club.
Club shall have the right to terminate the Agreement at any time, with no further obligation…for any personal conduct on or off the field which would embarrass, discredit, or disgrace Club and such termination shall be a good cause termination.

EXCERPTS FROM LETTER SENT TO KIFFIN FROM AL DAVIS ON 9/12/08:

Over the past months, you have made a number of public statements that were highly critical of, and designed to embarrass and discredit this organization, its players and its coaches. I left you alone during training camp in hopes that you would cease your immature and destructive campaign.
However, you continue to make public statements that are critical of the organization, its players as a whole as well as individual players. Such statements constitute conduct detrimental to the Raiders and I will no longer stand silently by while you continue to heart this organization.
I realized when I hired you that you were young and inexperienced and that there would be a learning process for you. Your mistakes on player personnel and coaches were overlooked based on our patience with you. But I never dreamt that you would be so untruthful in statements to the press as well as on so many other issues. Your actions are those of a coach looking to make excuses for not winning, rather than a coach focused on winning.

2. Although you continue to use the media to express your dissatisfaction with others, no one has publicly pointed out to you that in 4 preseason games and one regular season game played this year, your offense has scored one first half touchdown. That put tremendous pressure on the defense. This letter constitutes notice that if you further violate any term of your contract, in any manner whatsoever, you will be terminated for cause. I trust that this will not occur.

AFTER KIFFIN AND HIS ATTORNEY RECEIVED THE LETTER OF POSSIBLE TERMINATION, HERE ARE SOME OF HIS STATEMENTS THAT APPEARED IN BAY AREA NEWSPAPERS:
KIFFIN STATEMENTS IN CONTRA COSTA TIMES ARTICLE (9/15/08): “I have not spoken with him, (and) I have not been told anything.”

KIFFIN STATEMENTS IN SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE ARTICLE (9/16/08): “I’ve been nothing but extremely honest with you guys…I got to tell you the way it is, and that’s all I did.”

KIFFIN STATEMENTS IN CONTRA COSTA TIMES ARTICLE (9/18/08): “No, I have not had communication with him over the last two weeks,” Kiffin said in a conference call with
Buffalo-area media. “All I know is what people tell me or what’s in the paper.”
KIFFIN STATEMENTS IN OAKLAND TRIBUNE ARTICLE (9/22/08): “I have not had a conversation with him about it nor has he gotten in touch with me. So, I can’t worry about
what other people say. If we believed everything people said around here, we would be in a lot of trouble.”
Kiffin said he has not spoken with Davis since before the regular-season opener against Denver on Sept. 8. It isn’t for lack of opportunity. Davis attended practice Thursday and was available afterward. Also, Davis and Kiffin returned from road games in Kansas City (9/14/08) and Buffalo (9/21/08) the past two weeks on the same plane.

EXCERPTS FROM KIFFIN COMMENTS IN KNOXVILLE NEWS-SENTINEL:
“You had to figure out a way to motivate a building and a roster of players that are pulled a bunch of different directions because of all the different things there. Not just in the NFL, all the things that go with that, the players making so much money and number of those players being older than me. You’ve got to figure out how to motivate them, but you’ve also got to figure out – you’ve got a building with people that have been there 25 or 30 years and no matter how little they do, they’re not getting fired. That’s not an easy thing to do. So try to find a way to win over and motivate people that you’re not allowed to fire, no matter how poor they do at their job. Everything seems easy now compared to that.”
EXCERPTS FROM KIFFIN COMMENTS IN SPORTS ILLUSTRATED RELATED TO FIRING EMPLOYEES:
Lane flew back to Tennessee less than 48 hours after his son was born. He’d arranged to have someone fetch him at the airport, but the driver was 25 minutes late. “I came back and within five minutes I’d fired the guy who was in charge of the guy who’d been sent to pick me up,” says Kiffin. “Here’s the point: We need to win. That’s 25 minutes that Nick Saban and Urban Meyer had that I lost because somebody was late picking me up at the airport.” Kiffin has shown no more sympathy for the rest of the support staff he inherited from Fulmer. “You can’t count the number of people we’ve run off because they couldn’t keep up, and I’m including secretaries,” he says. “They had to go because they weren’t going to make it, and they knew it.”
EXCERPTS FROM TENNESSEE ATHLETIC DIRECTOR’S COMMENTS IN KNOXVILLE NEWS-SENTINEL RELATED TO KIFFIN NOT BEING ABLE TO FIRE EMPLOYEES:
Despite what you might read in Sports Illustrated, new Tennessee football coach Lane Kiffin hasn’t contributed to Knoxville’s unemployment rate. “He has not fired anybody,” UT athletic director Mike Hamilton said Thursday afternoon. “If he said he has fired somebody, that’s not true. I don’t know if he said it from a standpoint of making a point that ‘We’ve got to get this right.’ But he didn’t fire anybody.

“You can’t just fire anybody at Tennessee, particularly when you’re talking about non-contract employees. There’s a process.” Kiffin said in a Sports Illustrated story this week that one person had been fired and others had been “run off.”

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