There was nearly a wrinkle in his crisp sweatsuit although, given their well-documented knobbiness, the same could not be said of his knees. And, no, Kiffin didn't show up blabbering mindlessly about all the Oakland Raiders offensive weapons that he and his charges must unarm for the Bucs to finally claim their first Super Bowl victory.

Fact is, Kiffin almost didn't show up at all, hustling and bustling in for a 20-minute concession of his every-second-counts-now agenda to a media horde anxiously awaiting the arrival of a colorful man who has become minister of defense for Super Bowl XXXVII. It was, a lovable but virtually invisible Kiffin explained, all the time he could spare.

The final X's of the defensive game plan, after all, had not yet been doodled.

	“	He's the bridge (between coaching regimes). No, he's the Golden Gate Bridge. The guy is just incredible. His passion for the game is unmatched. ”
		— Jon Gruden, Bucs coach on Monte Kiffin

Kiffin suggested it was the most important meeting of the week, one meant to galvanize his brainy blueprint and to energize a cadre of gangtacklers who typically leave black-and-blue imprints on their opponents.

Then again, when he was the head coach at North Carolina State in the early '80s, Kiffin once suggested he would jump from a plane without a parachute if the Wolfpack won that weekend's contest. They did and he kept his promise, although the plane he jumped from was a helicopter, and the altitude when he leapt screaming from the side door was maybe eight feet maximum.

"We've got to play fast, think fast, be fast in everything we do," said Kiffin, who emphasized his point by answering questions at something resembling warp speed. Suffice it to say that fast-talking guy in the old Federal Express commercials had nothing on Kiffin when it came to syllables per second.

At age 62, and in his 20th league season, Kiffin must sense time is running out on him. Truth be told, nothing runs out on or against Kiffin and the Tampa Bay defense, certainly not in big games. If you don't believe it, just check the stats, which document that the Bucs finished first overall in the league in frustrating opponents.

Such defensive brilliance can be attributed to a lineup that features Pro Bowl players from the front four, the linebackers, and the secondary. But mostly it can be traced to the wonderfully zany Kiffin, a football lifer, but a defensive guru who went largely unappreciated until the past few seasons.

Let him alone in his laboratory and give him ample time to plot and scheme, as the Tampa Bay organization has done this week, and he will likely deliver up a formula that at least has a chance of slowing Rich Gannon, Jerry Rice, Tim Brown and, yeah, maybe even Charlie Garner.

Even with the machine-gun quality of Wednesday's interview, Kiffin made it clear that the matchup of the Oakland do-it-all tailback and Bucs weak-side linebacker and league defensive most valuable player Derrick Brooks could be the key to the outcome of Super Bowl XXXVII.

Then again, the other really big key is for Kiffin to remember exactly where he stashed the game plan.

Last weekend, three hours before the NFC championship game, Kiffin sat in a corner of the media meal room upstairs at Veterans Stadium, making some last-minute revisions to the esoteric hieroglyphics he would later employ to neutralize the Philadelphia Eagles offense. Yep, there amid mustard stains and smudged fingerprints, folks, was the paradigm to a Tampa Bay victory.

And there it stayed, for nearly 90 minutes, right in the spot where Kiffin had abandoned it.

Eventually, of course, Kiffin returned to reclaim the precious diagrams. The cynics might now want to plug in the joke that made the rounds among the media aware of the Bucs' lost defensive Bible: Had the press handed over the game plan to Andy Reid, the Eagles still wouldn't have won, so diverse and convoluted was Kiffin's handiwork.

The win, which catapulted the Bucs into a first-ever Super Bowl appearance, certainly represented The Full Monte, a design that stripped the Eagles of their dignity and undressed quarterback Donovan McNabb.

Apprised of the story about the forgotten game plan, some of Kiffin's closest friends simply laughed, and allowed it was vintage Monte.

"He's a throwback," said former Minnesota and Cleveland coordinator Foge Fazio, who worked together with Kiffin on the New York Jets staff in 1990. "One minute, you think you're dealing with the absent-minded professor or something, you know. The next minute, he's like one of those Mensa people. One thing about Monte, he's sly like a fox."

Indeed, there is the perception that Kiffin is an old-timer still banging around with a screw loose somewhere. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the last couple seasons, and especially this year, his defensive expertise has brought Kiffin a kind of pseudo-cult idol status. He insisted, away from the madding crowd on Wednesday, that he probably isn't much better now than he has been in recent seasons.

But in the first year of the Jon Gruden Regime there is a feeling that Kiffin has a much freer hand than he did under former head coach Tony Dungy, whose area of expertise was also the defensive side of the ball. Cornerback Ronde Barber hinted at the new freedom earlier this week. Kiffin declined to comment on it and, in fact, praised Dungy for the chances he afforded him.

"I still think," Barber reiterated, "Monte is more aggressive now. I don't know what it has anything to do with, Tony leaving or whatever, but he has taken more gambles this year. We're not as predictable. That much I know."

Few people have ever dared use the term predictable in trying to describe Kiffin, who has now coached at the college or professional level for 38 straight seasons. Asked for a self-description, Kiffin offered just one word. "Old," he said, before bounding off to his meeting.

Unfortunately, that "old" tag is probably what is precluding Kiffin from any consideration for a head coaching job. This is a league where most owners are now seeking the younger face, the fresher idea, the coach who is equal parts public relations man. Nothing against Jack Del Rio, the new Jacksonville head coach, but does anything think his one year as a coordinator in Carolina outweighs the years of experience Kiffin has amassed.

Or the track record he has posted.

For six straight years, a stretch that includes Kiffin's tenure as coordinator, the Bucs have ranked among the league's top 10 defenses. It is a feat, since the 1970 merger at least, matched only two times. And, remember, Kiffin did it under two different head coaches. Smart man, that Gruden, keeping the beloved Kiffin around.

"He's the bridge (between coaching regimes)," said Gruden. "No, he's the Golden Gate Bridge. The guy is just incredible. His passion for the game is unmatched."

As crafty as he is crusty, a curiosity piece as much as a curmudgeon, Kiffin is the wacky professor from your Chemistry 101 class in college, the mentor who challenged you but also gained your respect. Even veterans like tackle Warren Sapp, whose disdain for most human beings is well documented, has a big, ol' soft spot for his boss. It is rumored the Sapp impersonation of the coordinator is killer on-target, but he won't break it out until the Bucs win a Super Bowl game, which could make Sunday night pretty interesting.

"If we win," Sapp said on Wednesday, "oh, the fun we're going to have, all of us busting on Monte."

Chances are good that Kiffin, whose improvisational old-school dances are said to be quite the sight, will join in the jocularity.

He is a good man, a guy who knows how to mix business and pleasure. Ask the friends who have been out to dinner with him, when he has used croutons or oyster crackers to diagram defenses. Or Jim Mora, who once sat open-jawed as Kiffin re-arranged the furniture in an office to demonstrate an exotic blitz scheme. Years ago, when Kiffin was part of the Vikings staff, he and defensive tackle Keith Millard staged a fight on top of an office building. The feigned fisticuffs ended when Millard tossed Kiffin -- OK, a mannequin dressed to resemble the coach -- off the building.

Said Millard: "Trust me, there are plenty of offensive coaches in the league now who wished it had been the real Monte I flipped off that roof."

Len Pasquarelli is a senior writer for ESPN.com.