For years, fans have assumed that Knox Kiffin, the son of former Tennessee Volunteers and current LSU Tigers head coach Lane Kiffin, was named after the city of Knoxville.
For years, fans have assumed that Knox Kiffin, the son of former Tennessee Vols and current LSU Tigers head coach Lane Kiffin, was named after the city of Knoxville.
Knox was born on January 13, 2009, which was just a couple of months after Lane was hired by Tennessee to replace Phillip Fulmer.
Many fans assumed that Lane and Layla, Knox's mom, named their son after the city of Knoxville.
But Knox said this week that's not the case.
"No, my mom saw it in a book," said Knox in an interview with WAFB's Jacques Doucet . "It means strong. Everyone thinks it's from Knoxville, but I was actually born in, like, the Oakland area… everyone likes to say it's from Knoxville, but it's really not. It's a coincidence."
Lane actually told ESPN in 2009, after he went back to California for Knox's birth, that his son wasn't named after Knoxville (but that didn't stop the urban legend from growing).
"He was named before I even got the job, actually," said Kiffin in 2009 . "[Layla] picked out the name because she had seen somebody else had named their kid Knox. I think it was Brad [Pitt] and Angelina [Jolie], actually. She had picked it out when we were still living in California."
There seems to be some debate over how Layla chose the name, but it sounds like it had nothing to do with the family's move from Oakland to Knoxville.
