Take Saturday’s game for what it is worth.

The Vols nearly squandered a 24-point lead to a Sun Belt opponent and exposed the chasm that remains between where the Vols are and where they want to be.

Despite the sobering reality of what transpired in the fourth quarter, first-year coach Butch Jones spun UT’s 31-24 win over South Alabama as positively as possible after the game.

Yes, the game ended with the visiting Jaguars on a 17-0 scoring run, but simply winning, Jones said, is the most important thing of all.

“I’ll look at the positive,” Jones said, “this team found a way to win.”

It seemed more like the Vols accidentally found a way not to lose, but either way, UT is where any reasonable observer expected it to be through five games in 2013.

That is why it is safe to say that the Saturday event most telling of the UT football program occurred far away from Neyland Stadium.

In fact, it occurred after most of non-partying Knoxville was asleep.

On an airplane in the dead of night, USC Athletic Director Pat Haden pulled the plug on Lane Kiffin’s tenure as the Trojans’ head coach and reinforced just how poorly Tennessee handled its coaching change in 2008.

Tennessee fired long-time head coach Phillip Fulmer in favor of a wildly-immature Kiffin for the 2009 season.

Then, randomly one night after just a year on the job, Kiffin bolted from UT for USC without even taking questions from the Knoxville media.

Because of the timing of Kiffin’s departure – early January – then-Athletic Director Mike Hamilton needed to make a quick hire for recruiting purposes.

He settled on Derek Dooley, and the Vols’ talent level suffered as a result of his inability to recruit at the level necessary to compete in the SEC.

But Haden’s decision to fire Kiffin makes it clear in retrospect that Hamilton made a poor choice with Kiffin because of more than just the questionable character that led him to leave UT after just one year.

As Haden discovered, Kiffin is not especially adept at winning football games, meaning that even if he was still at UT, the Vols would likely be floundering. Even if successful, Kiffin’s track record indicates that the Vols would probably be in deeper trouble with the NCAA than they already are.

If a pie chart was made to illustrate the blame for UT’s fall from glory, more than half of it would need to be dedicated to Tennessee’s poor choice with Kiffin, which led to an inevitably poor hire of Dooley.

Kiffin’s firing at USC is more than just a chance for UT fans to point and laugh because of the karma surrounding it.

The failure of Kiffin as a football coach should put a lump in the throat of UT supporters and make them realize how grossly mishandled the UT program was and how much that mishandling still contributes to where the program is in 2013.

Jones certainly seems to be taking the football program in the right direction, but the next three games against highly ranked SEC opponents will be a glaring reminder of how far it has fallen.

As if barely squeaking out a win against South Alabama in front of a half-empty Neyland Stadium was not eye-opening enough.

David Cobb is a junior in journalism and electronic media. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @DavidWCobb.