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Florida Football 100 For 100, No. 52: Lane Kiffin Is Still The Villain

By Andy Hutchins
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There are five days until Florida's September 1 opener with Bowling Green. There are 52 entries left in the 100 For 100 series. I'm not through dealing.

You may have problems hating a lot of the SEC's coaches, because they're generally good people (and Nick Saban), and you may have problems hating Jimbo Fisher, because he seems like a decent man tasked with coaching our least favorite team. Good news: Keep on hating Lane Kiffin, folks.

Put kindly, that's insane.

Will Muschamp is cryptic about injuries on game weeks, as was Urban Meyer; no coach will (or maybe should) give the media accurate information that can only hurt his team and help an opponent. But asking journalists not to do their job is worse than preventing them from doing it by closing practices, because it requires a level of cognitive dissonance that only someone like Kiffin could pull off.

USC's going to be really good this year, with '80s surf movie villain Matt Barkley under center and a stocked arsenal at the skill positions. That's just going to make it easier to hate Kiffin, who has never met a human being he couldn't enrage with a smirk. Though I suggest trying to find the bright side of everything and everyone, it's easier to hate him than to try to like him — and the return on investment on liking him for non-USC fans is low.

Also, if you like the hipstery stance of "We got there before you!": No college fans hated Kiffin as much as Florida fans did in 2009 before Florida fans did in 2009. Now, we get "FIRST!1E!EVEN!!!" rights.