For a guy who has been suspended for eight games, docked more than $1 million and labeled a cheater and a hypocrite, Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl apparently still has a pretty good sense of humor.
Pearl was speaking to a gathering of Tennessee alumni at a Knoxville Quarterback Club function on Monday afternoon when the topic of the Vols' pending NCAA woes inevitably came up. The Knoxville News Sentinel reports that Pearl used humor to make light of the situation, poking fun at himself and throwing a zinger at Knoxville's most hated man in the process.
"I've made mistakes, I clearly did, but what I was hoping for was that some other dumbass would get on the front page and take me off the hook,'' Pearl said. "I miss Lane Kiffin.''
The room erupted in laughter at that, no surpise considering the vitriol Kiffin inspired when he short-circuited Tennessee's football rebuilding process by leaving after just one season to accept USC's head-coaching job. Pearl also received laughs when he joked that he'd have more time to golf with alumni because of his one-year off-campus recruiting ban and when he referenced Tennessee's exhibition loss to the University of Indianapolis earlier this month.
"If you believe in the slippery rock theory, that if this team beats that team, and that team beats the next team, there's a chance the University of Indianapolis could play in the Final Four this year," Pearl said.
Although few verbal sparring matches between Kiffin and rival SEC football coaches would surely have stolen some headlines from Pearl's shady recruiting practices, the Tennessee basketball coach has managed to temporarily change the narrative himself. By defeating Villanova to win the prestigious Preseason NIT tournament last week, the Vols are suddenly a redemption story.
"We needed that," Pearl said in a rare moment of seriousness. "It felt good to get back to normal.''
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