When you say that the table is "facing outward," are you talking about
the rotation so that the top of the sideways table is at the fore
edge?
For the various commands that rotate the layout, specify the amount of
rotation (in degrees or "left" versus "right).
The rotate package says this:
% Now the user interface for LaTeX: \rotate[type]{text} where
% ``type'' is `l' for left, `r' for right, `u' for upside-down, or
% `f' for flip. `l' is the default.
It sounds like you want an option like "outside" versus "inside" as
opposed to "left" or "right." I don't know of an "outside" option,
but you could try the chngpage.sty package and
\def\myfigurecontents{blah blah}%
\checkoddpage% from chngpage.sty
\ifcpoddpage
\rotate[r]{\myfigurecontents}
\else
\rotate[l]{\myfigurecontents}
\fi
...or vice-versa. I think Peter posted a new chngpage.sty a couple
days ago.
If you are using memoir, the code starts with
\strictpagechecktrue%
\checkoddpage%
\ifoddpage
...
Check your formatting guidelines about placing the page number and
caption (page number usually stays on the same part of the page even
if the text is rotated). To rotate the caption with the text and put
it at the "bottom" of the rotated text, you want to put the \caption
command inside the block of rotated text but below the content that
fills the table.
If you want the caption and the bottom of the normal page and you
don't want to rotate it, then put the caption command outside the
block of text that is rotated but inside the \begin{table} or
\begin{figure} block--and put the \caption{My Caption}
\label{MytblLabel} just before the \end{table} or \end{figure}
command. Once again, your publication guide might have a preference,
and I suspect that the caption should rotate with the table or figure.
I suspect that you are using a single column format, but if you are
using twocolumn, there is a package called ftnright.sty for putting
footnotes on the right--I vaguely remember having to tweak that for my
thesis.