It took just over one minute for Lane Kiffin to make it obvious to me why he is now the head coach at the University of Tennessee. About a minute into his introduction speech, Kiffin rehashed a conversation he had with UT athletics director Mike Hamilton early in the interview process.

"I said 'Mike, the last thing I want you to do is offer me this job right now. I don't know if that's what you want to do. But I don't want you to offer it to me. I want you to go out and interview every guy that's supposed to be the best in the world. Go interview them all. What I want you to do is come back to me and say I want you to be the head coach at the University of Tennessee. I know that you can do a better job than anybody else.'"

That statement to the man who could potentially be his next boss showed Kiffin's confidence in his own ability. And it showed he's ready to compete. Just what the Vols need.

He displayed those same qualities with a shot at the Florida Gators, who by the way may be about to win a second national championship in three years, later in the press conference.

"I'm really looking forward to embracing some of the great traditions at University of Tennessee, for instance, the Vol Walk, running through the T, singing Rocky Top all night long after we beat Florida next year," Kiffin said. "It will be a blast."

He later spoke on how he could not understand someone not wanting the job as UT's head coach simply because the SEC is a difficult conference.

But here's the thing about the conference being so "intimidating." It's really not that bad.

Obviously Florida and Alabama are powers the Vols must play every year. Those teams have dominated UT each of the past two seasons and are currently light years ahead. But who else is so scary?

The Georgia team that struggled to put the Vols away in Athens earlier this year and was blown out in Knoxville a year ago? The same Bulldogs who just gave up 45 points to Georgia Tech and could lose Matthew Stafford and Knowshon Moreno to the NFL?

I'm not saying Kiffin comes in and immediately pushes his team past Mark Richt's squad. But it's certainly not out of the realm of possibility that the Vols can beat the Bulldogs soon. It almost happened this year, in the down year of all down years.

And I don't want to hear anything about LSU being an SEC power. The Tigers lost five games in the SEC this year. That's the same amount as UT. Any coincidence that directly relates to all of the players Nick Saban recruited being gone and it now officially being Les Miles team?

Miles should have jumped at the money in Michigan last year when he had the chance, because he is going to wind up just like Larry Coker did at Miami. Win a title with the last coach's guys, out of a job before you can blink.

Of the other four bowl eligible SEC teams, UT beat Kentucky and Vanderbilt this season, and I refuse to believe South Carolina and Ole Miss are more talented than the Vols. Those teams are beatable next season.

It seems the biggest concern about Kiffin is that he's done nothing to earn this position. If you really think about it, people could have said that about a number of coaches who turned out to be great, though.

Current USC head coach Pete Carroll, one of Kiffin's mentors, was fired as an NFL head coach. Just like Kiffin was. Except Carroll was fired as head coach by two different NFL teams. And that was his only head coaching experience when he took over the Trojans.

He's built just a little bit of a powerhouse in Los Angeles.

There are currently four teams in the TNJN Top 25 coached by guys with NFL experience: Alabama (Nick Saban), USC (Carroll), Pittsburgh (Dave Wannstedt), and Oregon State (Mike Riley).

This just in: none of those guys were successful in the NFL. Just because a guy does not win coaching guys who get paid does not mean he will not be successful coaching 18-22 year olds. Often times it means the opposite. In addition to the aforementioned coaches, North Carolina's Butch Davis provides another example of that.

Sure all of those guys are older and spent longer spans of time as a head coach than Kiffin did in Oakland. But why is that a big deal? Plenty of guys become successful in their jobs without having prior head coaching experience.

Bob Stoops had never been a head coach at any level when he got his job at Oklahoma. He was a defensive coordinator at Florida for three seasons before taking over the Sooners. And then his program won the national title in his second season and has been a power ever since.

Georgia's Mark Richt got his first chance to run a program with the Bulldogs. Same with Joe Paterno at Penn State, Mike Gundy at Oklahoma State and countless others.

As a matter of fact, of the teams that received votes in this week's TNJN Top 25, 13 of the teams are coached by someone who had no Division I or NFL head coaching experience when they took over the program. Three more have coaches who had only coached in what is now the NCAA's FCS division.

It does not matter how many jobs Kiffin has had or what the positions he has held are. If he can coach, he can coach.

Monday provided everyone with the first glimpse of why Hamilton believes he found the right guy. And judging by his previous coaching hires, I'll trust that he did just that until proven wrong.