Luke Stocker

KNOXVILLE — Lane Kiffin knows what he wants University of Tennessee football to look like.

Until the Volunteers get there, though, their new head coach has one simple but firm demand: “Play physical.”

“That will be the only way to get on the field at Tennessee,” Kiffin bluntly said Monday afternoon.

Kiffin — the youngest coach in major Division I college football at 33 years, seven months — had a few key points Sunday night during his 41-minute introductory meeting with the team.

He told the Vols that he had nothing to do with Phillip Fulmer’s ouster and that he didn’t interview with athletic director Mike Hamilton until Fulmer’s fate was publicly announced.

“Then we talked about our expectation level, and the accountability they need to have,” Kiffin said. “I don’t care what you’ve done before. I don’t care how many stars you had as a recruit, how many yards you have, or how many tackles you have. It doesn’t mean anything now.

“I don’t even care if you’re on scholarship or not. We’re going to come in and we’re going to create a competitive program, and it’s done on the practice field. They’re going to earn their way.

“Not one of those guys is a starter right now.”

Sophomore tight end Luke Stocker, who was a starter this year, said Kiffin’s team meeting featured the “same stuff” he covered in Monday’s news conference.

“Except it was more intense, a lot more intense,” Stocker said. “It’s safe to say he set the tone.”

Stocker said he entered the meeting with an “open mind” and left with a “great first impression,” even after joking that Kiffin opened up his position.

“I think that’s going to create a really competitive atmosphere for spring practice,” Stocker said.

Preseason camp will be even better if Kiffin has his way. He hurried from the news conference to the airport Monday afternoon, excusing himself from booster meet-and-greets to fly to Memphis and meet with the state’s top high school senior prospect, 6-foot-5 Harding Academy wide receiver Marlon Brown.

Kiffin will see several more recruits this week and nearly every week until national signing day in early February.

He’s already told many of those recruits that his father, renowned Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin, will leave the NFL for a similar post with UT.

Both Kiffins have declined to comment publicly on an arrangement that several reports have referenced as imminent — as soon as the Bucs finish their season.

“As far as defense, that’ll be our defensive coordinator’s system when he gets here, so I can’t really comment on that part of it,” Kiffin said.

Several signs point to UT installing the “Tampa Two,” a 4-3-base defense derived from the “Iron Curtain” Pittsburgh Steelers defense in the 1970s but more prominently recognized in the 1990s under then-Bucs coach Tony Dungy.

Monte Kiffin coordinated those defenses and stayed in Tampa when Dungy left to lead the Indianapolis Colts.

The “Tampa Two,” still run by many NFL and college teams, is a “Cover Two” look — meaning two safeties in zone coverage are responsible for covering each deep half of the field. Monte Kiffin’s wrinkle to the system came from employing an undersized, quick middle linebacker who routinely drops back into zone pass coverage.

Size is often sacrificed for speed in the scheme, much like it was under coordinator John Chavis’s UT units. Linebackers are sometimes built like safeties, and defensive ends sometimes look more like linebackers. That had led some critics to question whether the scheme can properly defend a strong, interior running game — from a standard offense or a Tim Tebow-like quarterback — but supporters typically argue that weak defensive tackle play exposes any style of run support.

“It’s not the same thing as (Chavis’s) defense, but it’s really similar,” UT sophomore defensive end Gerald Williams said. “They’re both great defenses, and fun defenses to play in, because they let you fly around and make big plays.”

Offensively, the Vols will run Lane Kiffin’s system. In fact, Kiffin said he will call plays unless he hires a coordinator he knows and “really” trusts.

“It will still be the system I ran going all the way back to (Southern California),” Kiffin said. “We’re going to get the ball to our playmakers.”

Kiffin coordinated USC’s prolific “pro-spread” offenses in 2005 and 2006, and he was the passing game coordinator in 2004. Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart operated that system by getting the ball to a dizzying array of skill players that included Reggie Bush, LenDale White, Mike Williams, Dwayne Jarrett, Steve Smith and Fred Davis.

Head coach Pete Carroll’s Trojans are also known for their “best versus best” practice style, where they routinely pit the offensive starters against the defensive starters throughout the week.

“I’m not going to come in here and tell you we’re going to throw it this many times or run it this many times or whatever,” Lane Kiffin said. “We’re going to do whatever it takes to win, and that will change each week. All I can tell you about our offense is that it’s going to be really physical. I can’t tell you how many points yet. I can’t tell you that stuff. But we’ll be physical, because we’ll play the physical players.

“We don’t play guys that don’t play physical or don’t play tough, and we’ll find that out real quick.”