USC football coach Lane Kiffin said Tuesday that he was surprised by the lawsuit the Tennessee Titansfiled against him and the school after he hired away one of the NFL team's assistant coaches.
Kiffin, in New York on Tuesday for a Pacific-10 Conference media event, said Kennedy Pola's hiring "was done no differently than any we did at SC or Tennessee. I didn't anticipate this. No one would have."
Pola, who picked up his belongings at the Titans' facility Monday, echoed those sentiments during an interview with The Tennessean.
"It caught me off-guard," Pola said. "(Titans coach Jeff Fisher) said, 'Hey, good luck' and that was it. I thought everything was cool. Then I got a call a little while later from (a friend) saying, 'Hey, you're being sued.'
"I wouldn't blame Jeff for being mad because of the timing of this. It's terrible. But it wasn't that Lane was trying to recruit me or prematurely do something. I was locked in (with the Titans). That is clear. I was all in; I didn't have a backup plan. I'd planned on being here, and everything happened so fast."
Kiffin hired Pola, the Titans' running backs coach, on Saturday to be offensive coordinator and running backs coach for the Trojans. Fisher, a former USC player, said he was upset by the fact that Kiffin, who once coached the Oakland Raiders, didn't contact him before reaching out to Pola, who came to Tennessee from Jacksonville in January.
On Monday, Tennessee Football Inc., the company that owns the Titans, filed a suit accusing Kiffin and USC of violating Pola's contract.
The Titans reconfigured their coaching staff Wednesday to make up for the loss of Pola. Craig Johnson was promoted to assistant head coach/running Backs, Dowell Loggains was elevated to quarterbacks/passing game coach and Richie Wessman is now quality control coach/offense.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
