KNOXVILLE – Ed Orgeron has been back to Knoxville just once since he and Lane Kiffin left the Tennessee campus with students setting couches aflame in January of 2010.
“I went one time to speak to the booster club, and I enjoyed it,” Orgeron said in an interview with Knoxville’s Sports Radio WNML this week. “We went over there to that little place, Calhoun’s, on the river right there and talked to everybody.
“It was a tremendous reception. Guys were really nice to me. I thought I had a great relationship with the people in Knoxville.”
Orgeron was the defensive line coach and recruiting coordinator for Kiffin at Tennessee in 2009 before they bolted for Southern California after just 14 months on the job. Now the head coach at LSU, Orgeron will return to Neyland Stadium on Saturday for the first time since that infamous late-night exit just weeks before signing day nearly eight years ago.
His time at Tennessee was brief, but Orgeron knows both the school and the situation that interim Tennessee coach Brady Hoke finds himself in. Last year, Orgeron was named interim coach at LSU when Les Miles was fired after four games. The Tigers finished the season with wins in six of their last eight games, and Orgeron got the full-time job.