Lane Kiffin not focusing on wins and losses to define success

During his time at Ole Miss, head coach Lane Kiffin has found plenty of on-field success. Since the start of the Johnny Vaught era, only three coaches have had higher winning percentages in school history. Despite that, Kiffin says he’s not focusing on wins and losses to define success.

Kiffin explained that he doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about how to define a successful season but thinks that there are too many variables to judge on wins.

“You know, I don’t spend a lot of time on that,” Lane Kiffin said. “That’s so far down the road and, you know, people want to say win this many games or, whatever, finish this place in the conference, that’s like — there’s too many variables.”

Lane Kiffin may not define success based on wins and losses, but that is how most people judge coaches in their fourth season with a program, especially after rumors swirled that he could leave for a division rival. On top of that, Ole Miss has a very difficult schedule this season and analyst Roman Harper expects them to lose every road game.

“You want to coach very well and play very well,” Kiffin added. “And sometimes that means this many wins and sometimes the ball hits the upright and doesn’t go in, you know, or a ref misses a call. So, I know at the end of the day it’s about wins and losses. Okay, but from a coaching standpoint, it’s about coaching really well and getting our guys to play really well, and be hard to beat.”

In 2022, Ole Miss started 7-0 before finishing just 1-5. It was a tough way to end the season and is a performance that Lane Kiffin wants to avoid repeating.

“I think last year, at the end, we weren’t hard to beat because we turned the ball over, didn’t get turnovers, were horrible in the redzone, you know, we have people too many easy plays,” Kiffin said. “And, to me, when you’re a really good team, you coach really well, you’re playing really well, you’re hard to beat. You may lose some games, but you’ve got to play really well to beat us and I do not feel like that was the case at the end of the season.”

Lane Kiffin on pushback to his NIL comments

During SEC Media Days, Lane Kiffin took aim at NIL and worried about its impact on college athletics. However, he quickly found pushback to his comments. Now, he’s responded to that pushback.

“I mean I’m OK. It is what it is. People are going to, when you sit up here and talk for a while, they’re going to take little parts of it and cut down the paragraph or the sentence and then it plays different than you’re saying,” Kiffin said.

“To be clear, like I mentioned just earlier, it’s a really bad system, like I said. I didn’t say all of college football is broke. But I’m talking specifically about two things: portal and NIL and them coming together at the same time together basically a couple years ago and it not being thought out of the issues that come around that.”