Ask Lane Kiffin a question, on the record or off, and he’ll choose honesty over coach speak, breaking away from most of his college football colleagues when it comes to media duties. Ask him about the potential of the Tennessee job opening and the first-year Florida Atlantic head coach will gladly retreat to coaching cliches.

Kiffin was a guest on 104.5 The Zone’s 3HL in Nashville on Thursday to preview his FAU team’s meeting with Western Kentucky on Saturday.

During the wide-ranging interview, the former one-and-done Tennessee head coach was given a hypothetical situation to address: Say the Vols have an opening, and say you’re looking for your next job. Interested?



“I can’t really go there on that question, you know that,” Kiffin said, drawing a laugh. “As much as I don’t (use) coach speak, that’s the one I’ll coach speak.



“We’re extremely excited where we’re at. We have great players, a great team here. So we’re not even thinking about anything else. We’re only focused on today and getting better.



“There’s your coach answer for you.”



And that was the extent of the coach speak during the 12-minute afternoon interview.



He addressed regrets in his coaching career, detailed his last dramatic night on the job at Tennessee and what he was trying to do by holding the infamous press conference gone wrong in Knoxville.



At 34-years-old, Kiffin coached the Vols to a 7-6 record in 2009, hired to replace longtime head coach Phillip Fulmer.



Kiffin had already spent three seasons as head coach of the Oakland Raiders, where he went 5-15 before being fired, and had been an assistant at Southern Cal from 2001-05, ascending from tight ends coach to wide receivers coach, then to pass-game coordinator and offensive coordinator.



Asked about regrets in a coaching career that dates back to 1997 at Fresno State, Kiffin chose not to use the term.



“Not really regrets, it’s things you learn from,” he said, “to handle those different if they come up again. There’s all kinds of things when you’ve been a coach at that many places, done things. There’s a lot of things you did good and a lot of things you did bad.”



But, as he explained, those bad things aren’t noticed as much while other coaches are climbing the ladder.



Not the case for Lane Kiffin, the son of Monte Kiffin, a successful, longtime college football and NFL coach and the architect of the Tampa 2 defense.



“I know I’m a lot better today than I was before because you learn from the bad, and you mature some, too,” Lane Kiffin said. “You’re put on a very big stage at a really young age. You’re going to make mistakes.



“Most coaches make those mistakes on a small stage because typically your first job comes on a small stage, you never even hear about it. I kind of went the other way.”



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Kiffin tried to go the other way of most coaches in January 2010, when he was suddenly on his way out of Tennessee after one season to take over as head coach at Southern Cal.

The Trojans hired Kiffin to replace Pete Carroll while Kiffin was representing Tennessee at the SEC league meetings. Kiffin wanted to tell his Tennessee players first, so he got on a plane and flew back to Knoxville.



“But how this world works, that was leaked already at that point,” Kiffin said of his stunning job news. “Then I tried to do the media part. I was trying to do it different than most people do, because I wanted to do that out of respect to the media, the fans, the players.”



Kiffin agreed to meet with the Knoxville media in a board room on campus, but under the condition that it was audio recordings only, not on camera. He wanted a chance to explain why he was leaving Tennessee, instead of just boarding a private jet bound for his new job in Los Angeles.



“It was really crazy, how it got blown up to be a negative thing about the press conference,” Kiffin said. “When coaches leave places — and I was advised not to by representatives there — you’re not going to have a press conference. You just leave. That’s what you do. You leave and have a press conference at the new place.”



Kiffin, he said, “wanted to go the other way with it,” in explaining his actions.



“I said, ‘No, I really feel like the media has been great to us here, the people. I really feel like I should give them an explanation, instead of just getting on a plane and leaving,’” he said. “That’s why i was having a press conference, to just explain to them.



“I was asking them not to have cameras because I had gotten to know them, ‘I just wanted to explain to you guys why I made this decision, so you guys understand.’



“It just backfired,” he added, “because one person was like, ‘No, we’re not putting cameras away.’ It just became whatever at that point.”



Kiffin ended up on camera, spending roughly 60 seconds expressing gratitude for the 14 months he spent in charge of the Tennessee program.



Outside the press conference, Tennessee students rioted on Johnny Majors Drive, between the Neyland-Thompson Sports Center and Stokely Athletic Center. At one point a mattress was burned in the street.



“That was crazy,” Kiffin said. “I felt like I was in one of those movies where you’re bunkered down somewhere. Trying to hide. There are fires outside. How are we going to get out of this place?”



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Kiffin waited. And waited. And waited some more. That's how he got out.

“Eventually they drank too much, too long, so they just passed out,” Kiffin said of the Tennessee students. “Then a cop snuck us out.”



Kiffin went 28-15 at USC before being fired five games into the 2013 season, after a 3-2 start.



After working for Nick Saban as Alabama’s offensive coordinator from 2014-16, Kiffin is 4-3 through seven games at Florida Atlantic, with a 3-0 Conference USA record.



Kiffin started his Tennessee coaching career with a 63-7 win over Western Kentucky at Neyland Stadium in 2009. He’ll face the Hilltoppers as FAU’s head coach Saturday at L.T. Smith Stadium in Bowling Green, Ky.

Reflecting on his time with the Vols, he said he needed no do-overs.



“I had a great time there,” Kiffin said. “I’ve said it all along over the years. The people were awesome. It was just that an opportunity came up that was my dream job, something that was so familiar to me, that place.



“It was the only place I would’ve left for.”



He just wished he would’ve done more homework on his dream job and the NCAA sanctions USC was facing in wake of the Pete Carroll era.



“I wish I would’ve foreseen that there was going to be 30 scholarships (taken away),” Kiffin said, “because when I was talking to them, it was, ‘Oh no, no big deal, maybe one or two scholarships. No bowl ban.’

“So we had no idea that’s what the penalties were going to be.”

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Contact Grant Ramey by email at grant.ramey@cbsinteractive.com or on Twitter (@GrantRamey), or FOLLOW GOVOLS247 ON FACEBOOK.