What is it about Kiffin and recruiting violations? Is he trying to beat the rest of the SEC for recruiting violations combined? Until this week, he had five self-reported secondary recruiting violations, and his sixth occured this morning on ESPN.

In an attempt to steal the popular store's slogan of "See a softer side of Sears", Kiffin invited ESPN's Outside the Lines into his football complex at the University of Tennessee, his football offices, and his home to show his softer side. It was a public relations stunt to a different side of Kiffin from the personality that has raised such a ruckus nationwide.

From calling Urban Meyer a cheater to saying kids that graduate from USC are going to pump gas for a living, from making fun of a small town in South Florida to calling out SEC coaches Saban and Miles; Kiffin has had no trouble in getting attention to the Universty of Tennessee, which he claims was all in his "master plan."

This, however, was probably not in his master plan. Six recruiting violations in the same number of months as head coach? Some would claim it may be ignorance, but can it really be that when his resume states he was the recruiting coordinator at the University of Southern California? It seems like a lot more defiance than ignorance, and at best a mixture of the two.

While the cameras were filming for ESPN's Outside the Lines, Kiffin was filmed in his office with two recruits talking, and it is a recruiting violation to have media present when a recruiting visit is in process. The rule is as follows:

NCAA bylaw 13.10.1
A member institution shall not permit a media entity to be present during any recruiting contact made by an institution’s coaching staff member.

Although it is a minor violation and nothing really that serious, it is when it's number six and counting. Unfortunately for Kiffin and the University of Tennessee, the counting doesn't seem to have an end in sight.

Here's a link to the ESPN Video if you'd like to watch it. The violation occurs at 1:45 left in the video.

 Rusty Thompson is one of the founders of GatorTailgating.com