Lane Kiffin explains why transfer portal makes his job challenging

Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin has been vocal about his concerns around NIL and the transfer portal, but the veteran coach has also been quite clear that despite his misgivings he will work the rules just like anyone else.

On Wednesday, Kiffin hinted that his team probably still isn’t done in the transfer portal, even as fall camp begins.

“It’s very challenging. The parts I don’t like is you get away from Xs and Os sometimes,” Kiffin said. “I mean we’re still here the last few days, our roster’s not even done yet. We’re still in on a couple guys potentially here that may be practicing tomorrow that aren’t here today. That’s not normal. It’s just really unique.”

One of those players committed to Ole Miss on Friday evening, with Oregon State running back transfer Jamious Griffin linking up with the Rebels.

Still, despite his own success in the transfer portal, Kiffin remains a pretty big critic of NIL and the transfer portal in their current state.

“It’s really challenging now because it’s really hard to build a team and it’s really hard to build a program because every year is so new,” Kiffin said. “I’ve been vocal about it, so don’t get me wrong. Again, just because I say it’s not a very good system that’s in place with the portal and NIL combined and not really good regulations around it, we still maximize it. We still utilize it as much as anybody because those are what the rules they have in place.”

Kiffin’s critique has been fairly consistent. On the NIL front, the lack of uniform rules — either at the NCAA level or the state legislative level — has made things incredibly complex and challenging.

When it comes to the transfer portal, the timing of the portal windows seem to be his biggest beef. The portal windows tend to open up at very active periods of the year for coaches, throwing their schedules into complete chaos and disarray.

“I think it’s extremely challenging, and again, I’m not complaining about my job because… Jimmy Sexton won’t like this but I’ve mentioned it before, I think we are extremely overpaid for what we do because we have awesome jobs where it’s fun to come here every day,” Kiffin said. “People say pressure and all that, but we’re extremely overpaid. They’ll tell you that’s the market.”

Overpaid or not, Kiffin would still like to see some changes to the current structure of the transfer portal.

“I said it the other day, there’s no sport like it that you can look to to say, ‘OK, this is how you do it and this is how you manage a team and this is how…'” he said. “And you really, in some ways, if you take a freshman and they’re a really good player and you put a really good scheme in and coach him really well and get him the ball a lot, well you’re creating your own problem because now at the end of the season everyone wants him and wants to pay him all this money because of his production. That doesn’t happen (anywhere else). Usually your rookies, they play really well, you’ve got them for their rookie contract.”