WBIR-TV in Knoxville reports today that “freshman safety Nyshier Oliver was arrested on November 7 and charged with shoplifting at a department store in West Town Mall.”

The police report says Oliver was spotted putting a brown shirt worth approximately $110 in a Dillard’s bag. He was arrested around 1:45 that Saturday. That was just over five hours before the Vols were to play Memphis in the homecoming game at Neyland Stadium. Oliver will have an arraignment in the matter on November 23rd.

November 7? But didn’t Lane Kiffin trumpet the Vols’ clean arrest record after that date? Here’s Kiffin on Nov. 12, five days after Oliver was arrested and the day before the arrest of Nu’Keese Richardson, Mike Edwards and Janzen Jackson on robbery charges:

“We’ve had zero arrests in now 11 months here.”

But Kiffin didn’t stop there. He lied again. Read more…

Best individual performance of the day (so far) belongs to Ole Miss running back Dexter McCluster, who rushed for 324 yards in a 42-17 win over Tennessee.

(With apologies to our beloved United Auto Workers)

Highlight of his day was this amazing scamper, which featured a sweet sideline-to-sideline cutback that punctuated a 71-yard run.

Video after the jump, courtesy Matt Hinton at Yahoo Sports’ Dr. Saturday. Read more…

As Lane Kiffin sifts through the evidence and decides what to do with the three Univ. of Tennessee players who got all robby at a Knoxville gas station on Wednesday, one of the intended victims, Corey B. Zickefoose, is taking a very zen-like approach to the entire affair. In short, Mr. Zickefoose says that the players shouldn’t be kicked off the team. Because hey, it might cost Tennessee a win!

This case gets weirder as more details emerge. For instance, Zickefoose said he told one of the players, who had a gun to his head, that he didn’t have any money: all he had was a cheeseburger, and did the robber want that? But the best part is this glorious quote from the victim:

“Yeah, it’s Tennessee. That’s the way it is sometimes,” Zickefoose said. Read more…

You’d think that being a state representative - and all that entails, in terms of a high profile - would prevent someone from basically trying to get arrested at the state’s most popular football team’s stadium in the person’s home state. You’d think that, but you don’t know State Rep. Stacey Campfield (R-Knoxville), and he has got so much to teach you.

(An artist’s rendition of Mr. Campfield’s appearance at the game. If the artist had been sniffing glue all day. Which I have.)

At the Halloween game between the South Carolina Gamecocks and host Tennessee Volunteers, Mr. Campfield showed up to the game with a luchador mask (see here and here for examples) despite warnings that masks were strictly verboten. A woman and her daughters complained - likely because only al Qaeda violate security measures at a football game - and complained to a security guard.

Then things got weird.

Read more…

On Halloween, to go with the black and orange is probably Lane Kiffin’s only best idea since he got to Knoxville. (Besides taking off his shirt.)

(Did Layla have anything to do with the change? Seriously?)

Not everyone agrees with my assessment though.

On the left is another style the Vols have gone with in the past.

I actually like the black pants better than the black tops, but guess they wanted to get away from the O-Line resembling pumpkins at least one home game this season. Read more…

No matter what Bruce Pearl does in his coaching career, to me he’s always going to be the guy who, as an administrative assistant to Tom Davis at Boston College, once wore the Eagles mascot costume during a game. That says all you need to know about Brucie — he’ll don any persona, no matter how unusual or degrading, in order to get ahead.

That includes Catskills insult comic, apparently. Appearing at a TVA charity fundraiser on Thursday morning, the Tennessee men’s basketball coach made a comment so inappropriate that it set off the auditorium’s automatic sprinkler system. At least that’s what I heard. Bruce, Bruce, Bruce. When will you learn? (Answer unclear). Read more…

Normally, you don’t see a broadcast booth spend a plurality of a football game raving about the “time of possession” statistic. Then again, normally, you don’t see a team win said battle by a full 30 minutes of game time, which is precisely what Miami did to Indianapolis last night. And then again, you don’t normally see a team control the ball for fewer than 15 minutes of the game… and win anyway.

(”Okay, so you just scored the go-ahead touchdown. Allow me to retort: BOOOO THUMBS DOWN TO YOU BOOOOOOO!”)

But lo and behold, thanks to the quickest of quick-strike offenses, the Colts did exactly that; thanks to touchdown drives of 1, 6, and 4 plays, Indianapolis prevailed in Miami, 27-23. Indeed, the Colts’ longest drive of the night was a 9-play drive that led to a 2nd quarter field goal; on the other side of the field, the Fins had exactly one shorter drive: an 8-play, 25-yard drive that ended in a punt. After that, literally every drive of theirs was 9 plays or longer. That’s the longest shortest drive since [ERROR WE ARE NOT ELIAS SPORTS BUREAU CLIENTS ABORT, RETRY, FAIL?].

Ah, but without turnovers, time of possession is effectively meaningless. Read more…

The biggest story by far leading up to this past weekend’s college football games was the impending beatdown of Tennessee by Florida. It was the game that was going to expose Lane Kiffin as a spoiled, inept brat and cement Tim Tebow’s second Heisman. Urban Meyer, master coach and motivator, would have his Gators so fired up to crush Tennessee that the only concern for the Gators was whether they could fit triple digits on the scoreboard.

Only, um, that never happened. Florida gritted out a rather sloppy 23-13 victory over the Vols that failed to live up to the media’s hype. Kiffin himself was the orchestrator of much of the hype, and quite a few postgame stories fed into that, undeservedly praising him for reigning in the defending national champs and the Football Messiah. Undeservedly? Yeah, turns out that the biggest opponent the Gators might have faced last week wasn’t Kiffykins, but the ever-looming Swine Flu.

Read more…

Earlier this week, Pete Carroll raise a few eyebrows when he more or less said that Washington’s Jake Locker was a better QB than Terrelle Pryor. After all, Carroll’s Trojans just beat Terrelle’s Buckeyes, and #3 USC was expected to humiliate the Huskies up in Seattle today. I mean, come on - Washington was winless last year and needed to beat lowly Idaho last week to end a 15-game losing streak.

Turns out Pete was right all along - and we’re sure he wishes he wasn’t.

Read more…

• A Michigan player punched a Notre Dame opponent during last weekend’s game? Rich Rodriguez has no idea what you’re talking about.

• Duke football players bedevil fans with their own shirtless poster.

• How did Lane Kiffin get to be the coaching genius that he is? By washing Reggie White’s car while his dad coached.

• Bills KR Leodis McKelvin decides not to press charges against the two teens who vandalized his yard after the Pats loss.

• Panthers WR Steve Smith loves teammate Jake Delhomme as a person, but hates him as a QB.

Read more…