Davis Flogs Kiffin Back to the Stone Age

After watching Al Davis' bizarre press conference explaining the Lane Kiffin firing on Tuesday, Scott Linehan must have felt as lucky as a Titanic survivor.

A day earlier, Rams owner Chip Rosenbloom had praised Linehan as a hard worker, said he was a good man, and took personal responsibility, along with his deposed head coach, for the team's struggles.

Not quite the tack Davis took in removing Kiffin. The 79-year-old owner reading the warning letter he had sent to Kiffin weeks earlier was akin to a teenager breaking up with his girlfriend, then going to the schoolyard to read his Dear John letter to the whole class. It's one thing firing someone, it's another one humiliating them in such a public way. Davis took that route for a couple of reasons. One, he needed to publicly emphasize the reasons for firing Kiffin as part of his legal justification for not continuing to pay him. Second, Davis just isn't the classiest guy in the world, and doesn't really care that this kind of spectacle is not the way business is typically conducted in the NFL circa 2008.

My jaw was on the floor listening to all this, but there is little disputing that it made for great theater. The revelations about Kiffin wanting the Arkansas job in 2007, Bobby Petrino leaving the Falcons with three games left in order to block Kiffin from getting it (bet you didn't think Bobby Petrino could ever look like MORE of a scumbag), and Kiffin not wanting to Draft JaMarcus Russell were the juiciest tidbits, but there was a whole lot to choose from.

Oh yeah, Davis also called ESPN's Chris Mortensen a "professional liar," which probably trumps him calling NFL Network's Adam Schefter a "false rumor mongerer" a couple of years ago.

The best part of the press conference, by the way, may have been Davis' get-up. Autumn is here, and I too am donning my burlap hoodie underneath garish silver and black jacket.