Lane Kiffin deflects question on Tennessee football sanctions

Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin is always going to be linked to Tennessee for his one season in Knoxville and his abrupt departure.

During SEC media days, the first question Kiffin was asked was about the penalties the NCAA recently assessed Tennessee following an investigation that found more than 200 individual infractions. However, he didn’t want to get too deep into it.

“Well, that didn’t take long,” Lane Kiffin joked.

The one major takeaway that Kiffin was willing to share was that it was telling how people around the Tennessee program reacted.

“I’ve got a lot of thoughts on that case and the case at USC and the case at Tennessee and penalties and all that,” Kiffin said. “I’m not really gonna get into that. I’m more here to talk about the Ole Miss team, you know, happy for Coach [Josh] Heupel. I read where he was ecstatic about the penalties and the $8 million fine. So, that probably tells you about how severe the penalties are in their eyes, so I’m happy for them that they don’t have to go through what we went through.”

What’s notable about Kiffin’s reaction is that he is currently the head coach at a program that recently had the hammer dropped on them by the NCAA for recruiting violations that occurred during the Hugh Freeze era. That included vacating wins, a postseason ban, and more.

So, the punishments for Tennessee that included a fine but no bowl ban are an interesting comparison that shows how much things have changed in NCAA enforcement.

“So, good for them,” Lane Kiffin concluded.

Lane Kiffin compared college and professional sports in a NIL rant

One thing that Lane Kiffin has been adamant about is that there needs to be some kind of change in how NIL is conducted in college sports. At SEC media days, Kiffin expressed those concerns once again.

“First off I’ve always said I think it’s phenomenal that players get a chance to get paid, which is great. I do think, which I’ve stood up here and said before when it first happened, that there’s going to be some major issues and we’re creating free agency with the portal,” Kiffin said.

“With NIL you’ve got a lot of pay for play going on, and that is what it is. So those two things combining, there just is not a system in place and I don’t think that there’s any other sports at any level that are like this that really you, every year, can opt into free agency. Really twice a year.”

For Lane Kiffin, this set up is even comparable to professional sports.

“I was just thinking on the plane ride over here, what if you had that in other sports? Tom Brady, Aja Wilson, Lionel Messi, LeBron James. What if every year those guys can opt into free agency, twice a year really, and they’ve got no long-term contracts? Basically everybody’s not even on a one-month contract because they can leave in two windows.

“It’s just created a lot of issues. … And I’m not complaining about it because we take advantage obviously of free agency, but at the same time I don’t think that’s really good for college football. These massive overhauls of rosters every year really is not in the best interest of college football.”