The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football by Jeff Benedict, Armen Keteyian
Authors: Jeff Benedict, Armen Keteyian
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would have never done that without being encouraged. That is the main reason I did go. I wasn’t planning on going. Then I got talked into it. So I went.”
A week after Earps and Johnson lost their jobs, Tennessee lost to Virginia Tech 37–14 in the Chick-fil-A Bowl, capping off a 7-6 season that included close losses to Alabama and top-ranked Florida. Kiffin pledged that he and his staff were just getting started. But on January 10, USC’s head coach, Pete Carroll, announced he was jumping to the NFL to coach the Seattle Seahawks. Two days later, Kiffin accepted an offer to become the Trojans’ new head coach.
Eight freshman recruits—the best players Kiffin and his staff had recruited—had just arrived on campus and enrolled in classes in order to be eligible to participate in spring practice. When Kiffin told them and the rest of his team that he was leaving, they were confused and angry. By signing letters of intent, they were not eligible to simply transfer to another school.
On the evening of January 12, Kiffin held a press conference at the Neyland-Thompson Sports Center. “This was not an easy decision,” he said. “This is something that happens very quick. We’ve been here fourteen months, and the support has been unbelievable here. I really believe the only place I would have left here to go was … Southern California.”
His remarks lasted fifty-nine seconds. He did not take questions.
As he turned to leave, a reporter shouted, “What does this mean for recruiting, Lane?”
Kiffin just walked off.
The news didn’t go over well on the Knoxville campus. Students rioted outside the sports center, burning mattresses and trying to block Kiffin from leaving the building. Campus police had to drive him home, and police security had to be positioned around his home that night.
Suddenly the program was in shambles. Bryce Brown, after rushing for 460 yards as a freshman, transferred to Kansas State. Byrnes recruit Brandon Willis de-committed and signed with North Carolina instead.
As Kiffin and players he had recruited left town, NCAA investigators showed up. The university contacted Earps and Johnson, requesting that they turn over their cell phone records. It also informed the girls that an NCAA investigator wanted to talk with them.
Earps knew one thing: The forty-eight-hour rule may have worked for Kiffin. But it wasn’t working for her. She figured she’d better find a lawyer.
Alan Bean is a medical malpractice attorney in Nashville. His specialty is defending health-care providers in negligence cases. But he got an intriguing call at his law office around the time that Kiffin left Tennessee for USC. One of Bean’s friends knew Lacey Earps. He asked Bean if he’d be willing to give her some legal advice. Bean said to have Earps call him directly. He’d be happy to help her.
Bean, twenty-seven, had no experience with sports law or NCAA regulations. He’d been practicing law for only three years at that point. The first thing he told Earps was that he was no F. Lee Bailey. But the Vanderbilt Law grad had been following the so-called Tennessee recruiting scandal in the news. On the surface he thought Earps was caught in a situation similar to what nurses experience when a hospital gets sued. In multimillion-dollar malpractice cases, the real targets are hospital executives and physicians. They are the ones who set policy and prescribe treatment. Nurses, on the other hand, are on the low end of the totem pole, so to speak. Nonetheless, they get named in lawsuits and are served court papers along with everyone else. Bean figured that hostesses were a lot like nurses—caught up in an NCAA probe where the true target was Lane Kiffin and his staff, not members of Orange Pride.
Earps was immediately comfortable with Bean. At his invitation, she gave him a synopsis of what she had done as a hostess. She went into greatdetail with respect to the trip she took to Byrnes High. As he listened,
A week after Earps and Johnson lost their jobs, Tennessee lost to Virginia Tech 37–14 in the Chick-fil-A Bowl, capping off a 7-6 season that included close losses to Alabama and top-ranked Florida. Kiffin pledged that he and his staff were just getting started. But on January 10, USC’s head coach, Pete Carroll, announced he was jumping to the NFL to coach the Seattle Seahawks. Two days later, Kiffin accepted an offer to become the Trojans’ new head coach.
Eight freshman recruits—the best players Kiffin and his staff had recruited—had just arrived on campus and enrolled in classes in order to be eligible to participate in spring practice. When Kiffin told them and the rest of his team that he was leaving, they were confused and angry. By signing letters of intent, they were not eligible to simply transfer to another school.
On the evening of January 12, Kiffin held a press conference at the Neyland-Thompson Sports Center. “This was not an easy decision,” he said. “This is something that happens very quick. We’ve been here fourteen months, and the support has been unbelievable here. I really believe the only place I would have left here to go was … Southern California.”
His remarks lasted fifty-nine seconds. He did not take questions.
As he turned to leave, a reporter shouted, “What does this mean for recruiting, Lane?”
Kiffin just walked off.
The news didn’t go over well on the Knoxville campus. Students rioted outside the sports center, burning mattresses and trying to block Kiffin from leaving the building. Campus police had to drive him home, and police security had to be positioned around his home that night.
Suddenly the program was in shambles. Bryce Brown, after rushing for 460 yards as a freshman, transferred to Kansas State. Byrnes recruit Brandon Willis de-committed and signed with North Carolina instead.
As Kiffin and players he had recruited left town, NCAA investigators showed up. The university contacted Earps and Johnson, requesting that they turn over their cell phone records. It also informed the girls that an NCAA investigator wanted to talk with them.
Earps knew one thing: The forty-eight-hour rule may have worked for Kiffin. But it wasn’t working for her. She figured she’d better find a lawyer.
Alan Bean is a medical malpractice attorney in Nashville. His specialty is defending health-care providers in negligence cases. But he got an intriguing call at his law office around the time that Kiffin left Tennessee for USC. One of Bean’s friends knew Lacey Earps. He asked Bean if he’d be willing to give her some legal advice. Bean said to have Earps call him directly. He’d be happy to help her.
Bean, twenty-seven, had no experience with sports law or NCAA regulations. He’d been practicing law for only three years at that point. The first thing he told Earps was that he was no F. Lee Bailey. But the Vanderbilt Law grad had been following the so-called Tennessee recruiting scandal in the news. On the surface he thought Earps was caught in a situation similar to what nurses experience when a hospital gets sued. In multimillion-dollar malpractice cases, the real targets are hospital executives and physicians. They are the ones who set policy and prescribe treatment. Nurses, on the other hand, are on the low end of the totem pole, so to speak. Nonetheless, they get named in lawsuits and are served court papers along with everyone else. Bean figured that hostesses were a lot like nurses—caught up in an NCAA probe where the true target was Lane Kiffin and his staff, not members of Orange Pride.
Earps was immediately comfortable with Bean. At his invitation, she gave him a synopsis of what she had done as a hostess. She went into greatdetail with respect to the trip she took to Byrnes High. As he listened,
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