Lane Kiffin jokes about 'rat poison' lesson learned from Nick Saban

While speaking with Paul Finebaum during SEC media days, Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin said he doesn’t take “rat poison” anymore as he’s grown. As they laughed at his reference to the memorable quote from Alabama coach Nick Saban, Kiffin went on to explain that as he’s grown as a coach he genuinely doesn’t read what people say about him as much.

Lane Kiffin on not taking “rat poison” anymore

Finebaum opened his interview with Kiffin as day one of SEC media days winded down by making him read an excerpt written about Kiffin live on air. The moment was a great look at how annoying it can be for a coach to read criticism about themselves, with Kiffin laughing that Finebaum himself probably wrote it.

Later in the interview, Finebaum brought up the article he had Kiffin read, and the Rebels coach took the chance to explain that when he first started out he took media opinions much more seriously — something he learned to grow out of with the help of Saban and his quote.

“You know, I’m not going to take it, because that would be rat poison,” joked Kiffin. “I don’t read this stuff anymore. Coach Saban taught me that.”

“I used to. I would have taken this and read all of it, whatever. I actually joked coming in here to the commissioner, he said you don’t have a tie on. He always wanted to do that but didn’t know if he would be the first to do that. I’m like, well, you know, I just kind of don’t do things the normal way.

“And also I remember being the first one at Tennessee years ago, however many years ago it is, 10 years, 11… 10 months. I remember coming to this thing and everyone telling me it’s going to be crazy. Like there’s going to be, for the first time then I think there was like 1,000 media members. Jimmy Sexton was like, ‘Hey, you’ve got to do a good job, there’s going to be a grade in tomorrow’s paper.’ Like, grade for the media day? And they would give you a letter grade for how you did as the coach. And so I remember being like all prepared and all nervous, and now I’ve realized after doing this it doesn’t matter what any coach says or does today.”