BY NATHAN WARTERS

(434) 385-5540

As if former Virginia Tech All-America center Jake Grove needed any more reason to pull for the Hokies in a bowl game.

Well, he got it the moment Tech’s Chick-fil-A Bowl matchup with Tennessee was announced.

Vols coach Lane Kiffin and Grove were together for parts of two seasons with the Oakland Raiders. Kiffin was the team’s head coach before his dismissal four games into the 2008 season. Grove was the starting center.

Grove, now the starting center for the Miami Dolphins, said he was treated well by Kiffin in Oakland.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want his Hokies to beat the orange out of the Vols.

“It’ll be a little extra incentive,” Grove said in a recent phone interview. “I’d like to see them beat up on Tennessee.”

Grove, a Jefferson Forest graduate who starred at Tech from 2000-03, is currently involved in an NFL playoff hunt for the first time in his six-year professional career.

He had that in mind when he signed with the Dolphins back in March. Miami is currently 7-7 and in the thick of the AFC Wild Card race. In five seasons in Oakland, Grove’s Raiders never won more than five games.

“It’s been a long time coming,” said Grove, who is hoping to get back on the field soon after missing some time with an ankle injury. “It’s exciting to be playing games that mean something in the big picture in December. I’ve never done that before. We’re going out each week and fighting for our playoff lives, so it’s real exciting.”

The one full season Grove and Kiffin were together, Oakland lost 10 of its last 12 games and finished 4-12.

The Raiders went 1-3 to start the 2008 season before Kiffin was fired, his dismissal announced in a bizarre press conference. During that gathering with the media, a rambling Al Davis called Kiffin, at the time the youngest head coach in the history of the NFL’s modern era, a liar and used an overhead projector to present his evidence for letting him go.
“I think he conned me like he conned all you people,” the Raiders owner said of Kiffin at the time.
That press conference was probably the most memorable moment of Kiffin’s brief Oakland tenure.
“I think that kind of shocked everybody,” Grove said. “That was something.”

Grove was coming off knee surgery when Kiffin was hired, but the coach, who was 31 at the time of his hiring, gave Grove the chance to earn his starting job back.

That meant a lot to Grove.

“He was very young. He was learning. He kind of got put in a situation that I don’t know if he was ready for it,” Grove said. “For whatever reason, it didn’t work out.

“My second year, the year he got fired, him and Tom Cable, the offensive line coach and now the (Raiders) head coach, they gave me a chance to start, and it really kind of turned my career around.

“I was coming off of pretty major knee surgery, and I was able to get back and play at a high level and things worked out with Miami. I will always have to thank him for giving me an opportunity to play last year. It turned my career around.”

Kiffin, who is now the youngest coach in major college football, was very complimentary of Grove’s play during his final two seasons in Oakland.

“A really good player,” Kiffin, who is now 34, said. “He had a really good year for us when he was healthy, and I really enjoyed being around him.

“Every single day, he just came in to work – extra weights, extra lifting.”

Grove played well in his final season with the Raiders, and he parlayed that into a five-year, $29 million contract with the Dolphins.

Oakland turned out to be a stepping-stone as well for Kiffin, who was an assistant coach at Southern Cal for six seasons before moving on to the Raiders.

Tennessee went 5-7 and missed a bowl last year in Phillip Fulmer’s last season as coach. Kiffin took over for the fired Fulmer last December, and in his first season led the Volunteers to a 7-5 record and the Chick-fil-A Bowl.

“I don’t know if you’re every truly ready for anything,” Kiffin said when asked if he was ready to be an NFL coach at such a young age. “Obviously, I was very young. It was a great experience, a great opportunity. With anything, you make mistakes, and hopefully you learn from them and move on.”

Kiffin attracted national interest to Tennessee from Day One, mostly through controversial statements made to the press.

“Kiffin coaches Tennessee, at least when he’s not setting the campus on fire,” Atlanta Journal Constitution columnist Jeff Schultz recently wrote.

Some of the lowlights included Kiffin falsely accusing Florida coach Urban Meyer of an NCAA recruiting violation and, according to an ESPN story, him allegedly telling a recruit that if he chose South Carolina over Tennessee, he “would end up pumping gas for the rest of his life like all the other players from that state who had gone to South Carolina.”

Kiffin’s rants have become so legendary that rapper Lil Wayne included a line about the coach in a song called, “Banned from TV.” The line is too explicit for these pages, but Kiffin didn’t seem to mind the attention.

Upon hearing of the rap, Kiffin wrote on his Twitter page, “… a huge shout-out to Lil Wayne for boosting our street cred!”

Kiffin has been under fire recently for more recruiting violations, of which he has denied any wrongdoing.

Controversy continues to follow the coach, but any negativity from this unwanted publicity doesn’t seem to have affected what Tennessee has done on the field.

Kiffin is winning games, and that’s all that matters to many fans.

Grove observed Kiffin up close for more than a year. He said Kiffin’s success hasn’t surprised him at all.

“He’s a smart guy,” Grove said. “He knows the game, and he was able to put together a good staff there. It’ll be interesting to see what happens over the course of the next few years.”