Southeastern Conference commissioner Mike Slive woke up Wednesday morning and breathed a sigh of relief. The nightmare for him is over.

Lane Kiffin bolted Tennessee and took over former boss Pete Carroll’s barely warm seat at Southern Cal, leaving the Volunteers after one season, a ton of bad publicity, a couple of arrests and the NCAA gumshoes sniffing actively around the Smokies.

It’s funny and more than a little ironic that the NCAA hammer is likely to fall hard on USC after violations in both basketball and football. And people wonder how running back Joe McKnight is able to drive around La-La Land in a $100,000 Land Rover on a college scholarship.

Steve Wilson is the sports editor of the Vicksburg Post. He can be reached at 601-636-4545, ext. 142 or at swilson@vicksburgpost.com

Everyone’s favorite silver-spoon kid with a 12-21 overall record is taking his dad Monte to run the defense and gorilla-like recruiting genius Ed Orgeron to sell impressionable youngsters on the merits of USC. Obviously, Ed will do this sans Orange-clad hostesses and Kiffin’s verbal shots at Florida coach Urban Meyer. Maybe Ed could rip off his shirt and get the Trojans to shout “Wild Boys” while he relives his glory days at Ole Miss, where he won exactly three SEC games, worked the team to exhaustion and was better known for Chris Vernon’s hilarious Youtube video and the alleged theft of some pillows and iPod alarm clocks from a team hotel.

Or Orgeron could just call members of Tennessee’s incoming recruiting class and offer them scholarships at USC, a big non-written no-no in college football recruiting. Wait, he already did that. According to reports on Knoxville TV stations, Ed was on the phone urging incoming recruits enrolling early not to show up because they had a scholarship at USC.

Ethics and Orgeron go together like a fried oyster and peanut butter sandwich.

If Kiffin starts talking at his USC news conference about honor and commitment, please pass the airsickness bags.

The man left an entire program that embraced him in the lurch. And why do plum jobs seemingly fall into his lap?

There was the time with the Oakland Raiders, where he and oddball owner Al Davis constantly butted heads after Davis hired the 31-year-old without any head coaching experience. Kiffin battled in the media with his meddlesome owner and finished with a 5-15 record before Davis fired him, calling him a “flat-out liar.” Ouch.

Then Tennessee came calling, offering him the chance to pick up the pieces after the slow decline of the Phil Fulmer era. He hired an all-star staff with his father, Orgeron and several other assistants hired away from conference rivals. He talked big about how he wanted to make Tennessee into the “USC of the South.”

He jabbed at seemingly every one of Tennessee’s rivals. He accrued minor violations as if they were going out of style. But in the end, after the arrests, the hostess scandal and the lackluster 37-14 loss in the Chick-fil-A Bowl to Virginia Tech, Kiffin proved to be all show, no go.

He’s a used car salesman with enough NCAA heat on him to fry an egg feet away. He’s a product of the money-infused, cutthroat world of big-time college football.

 And just judging by his record alone, he’s done next to nothing on the sidelines of two jobs. As Tennessee athletic director Mike Hamilton, who is probably on the chopping block for hiring Kiffin, will tell you, caveat emptor.

Let the buyer beware.