Mike Celizic

Is there still time to stop Lane Kiffin and the Tennessee Volunteers from going down to Florida this weekend? I mean before something happens that will make Serena Williams’ little tantrum look like a Barry Manilow concert?

The reason I say this is that the planets don’t seem to be favorably aligned for the volatile (that’s a nice word for ‘loose cannon’) Kiffin to be taking an inferior team down to play the man he spent the winter insulting, Gators coach Urban Meyer.

Normally, I’d say let him go and take an extra notebook to the game. But bad behavior is in the air, and I’m not sure we want to rely on a football coach — even one as upstanding as Meyer says he is — to keep his team from venting their spleen on Kiffin and the Vols, not after Kiffin committed the original playground sin of dissing the mighty Gators.

Odds are Meyer will do his best to keep the troops in line. His team does not have a history of thuggery. But we’re talking high-strung athletes playing for a high-strung coach. Meyer may not be the kind to encourage dirty play, but he has some history of piling points on opponents he doesn’t like. And if that starts happening Saturday, we can’t count on Kiffin’s crew to swallow the insult without fighting back in ways that won’t look pretty on SportsCenter.

I wouldn’t mention this if it weren’t for the outbreak of classless behavior we’ve seen recently. It started with Williams and her X-rated dietary advice to a line judge in the U.S. Open semifinals. Roger Federer threw a few expletives around Arthur Ashe Stadium while enlightening an umpire on what tennis players can say to the folks who make the judgment calls during his finals loss to Juan Martin del Potro.

Overlooked in the uncharacteristic boorishness at the Open was Michael Jordan’s extraordinarily whiny induction speech at the Basketball Hall of Fame. Everybody who ever doubted M.J.’s wonderfulness, including legendary Tar Heels coach Dean Smith, was a target of Jordan’s digs and jibes and told-you-sos. No one used the word ‘graceful’ to describe his speech.

This qualifies as an epidemic. And now we have two large groups of relatively unsophisticated kids who still believe being dissed is the greatest insult any person can absorb getting ready to play a game based on violence.

And we can’t count on Kiffin to do the right thing, either. In another situation, I might be singing his praises, if only because he’s the first coach with a discernible personality to show up at any level of football since your crazy Uncle Max took over your Pee Wee team.

Kiffin was briefly the youngest coach the NFL had ever seen, but then Raiders owner Al Davis, who isn’t the most tightly wrapped present under the tree, fired him in a display that was ugly even by Davis’ refined standards. Kiffin handled it with at least as little tact as Davis did.

But Kiffin is supposed to be a young genius, so he quickly landed at Tennessee. There, he chose to demonstrate his superior wit by spending the offseason accusing Meyer of cheating and talking about how much fun it was going to be singing “Rocky Top” after beating the Gators. This is like preparing for an outing to a fire ant plantation by covering himself in honey.

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There was a day when we celebrated such people. Billy Martin in New York and Earl Weaver in Baltimore gained God-like status by kicking dirt on umpires while directing spittle-flecked diatribes at them. If everybody acted that way, we would've had to tut-tut a lot and demand an investigation into why the Republic was falling apart. But because it was just a couple of goofballs who happened to be very entertaining when they lost all control, we actually celebrated them.

Those days are gone. The modern generation accepts no bad behavior from anyone — except themselves. They have turned the art of anonymous insult into an art form, but can’t understand how Williams or Federer can be such a jerk as to yell at a line judge or umpire.

But if tolerance is gone, the impulse to behave badly hasn’t changed a bit. Thanks to the Internet, it’s easier to insult and cyber-bully people than ever. Just read any message board, even respectable and well-maintained ones. They’re chock-full of vituperation and bad language and raw, inexplicable anger.

This is the mindset that Kiffin fueled with his intemperate comments. It’s what Meyer has to figure out a way to combat.

It’s not going to be easy. Meyer is using Kiffin’s comments to motivate his team. He’s telling his players to teach these guys a lesson. He’s probably already fantasizing about running up the score — just for fun.

You’re going to have a lot of frustration on the Tennessee side and a lot of nasty anger on the Florida side. Kiffin can’t be counted on to control anyone. So it all falls on Meyer.

We don’t need a brawl — like the Yankees-Blue Jays game on Tuesday night — or some really nasty personal fouls. We don’t need more trash-talking. We need a dollop of civility. Let’s hope Urban Meyer can dial it up.

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