You may have seen in the Speed Read this morning that Raiders executive John Herrera is a little on edge right now over this whole Lane Kiffin business, culminating in a confrontation with reporter Tim Kawakami.

(Herrera looks better without the helmet, honestly)

The latest from “Wonderland” (which is what Kawakami calls wherever Herrera is currently residing) is that Kiffin is apologizing for Herrera’s behavior, despite having nothing to do with incident and despite the fact that Herrera is alleged to have thrown Kiffin further under the bus by distributing a negative column about him to reporters.

Kawakami follows up in the SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS with this new development:

Lane Kiffin got in touch with me just now to offer his personal apologies for the incident John Herrera initiated with me yesterday.

Can’t emphasize this enough: Kiffin had nothing to do with what Herrera did. Or with my response.

Kiffin acted responsibly. Kiffin was the one who reached out today.

The longer this ridiculous situation goes on the more Kiffin looks like the only reasonable human being in the Raider organization. And there doesn’t seem to be any question about the effort his team is giving on a weekly basis, even if they’re outmanned. Still, it’s come to a point that he has to answer this question nearly hourly: Are you still the coach?

Kiffin said he was bothered by what happened and the way it happened. Oh, and I did ask and Kiffin did answer: As of 9:55 a.m. today, he’s still the Raiders coach.

And while Kiffin certainly does come off well in all of this, Kawakami’s coverage does veer into man-crush territory on occasion:

I told Kiffin that he certainly didn’t do anything he needed to apologize for during yesterday’s hub-bub, but that I appreciated today’s gesture.

And I told him that I knew nobody else–certainly not any senior executives–would be doing such a stand-up thing.

“Gee, Lane is just the coolest. Did you see what he was wearing yeterday? He’s so awesome. We’re bestest friends!”

The only sure thing about any of this is that there’s much more to come. When will Kiffin finally get the axe? Will the Kiffin-Kawakami bromance endure a professional breakup? Is Al Davis even still alive? This is all surely going to get a lot weirder.