Lane Kiffin praises work of Ole Miss' Grove Collective

Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin recently praised the work of the program’s collective, The Grove Collective.

Kiffin explained that he feels the collective has done an excellent job in the modern college sports landscape and emphasized how important the collective has been to the program.

“I think Walker Jones has done an unbelievable job with everybody in the collective,” Lane Kiffin said. “And that’s where we are in college football and in college sports, but especially college football. I know how important that is.”

A NIL collective is, essentially, an organized collection of donors to a program that raises money to help NIL opportunities for student-athletes. Some exist on one-time payments, while others use subscription formats.

Over the summer, On3 rated The Grove Collective as the ninth most ambitious NIL collective in college sports. Walker Jones serves as executive director for the collective, which launched in January of 2022.

“So, they’ve done a great job putting us in a position to have success next year, but also going back to this year looking at the portal and guys that could’ve left here like Quinshon [Judkins] after a year and start looking at our roster without portal additions that had a lot of options in places to go or current guys and you’d see a much different team.”

As Kiffin mentioned, one of the biggest benefits of The Grove Collective is that it has helped with the transfer portal. That includes both retaining players and bringing new players in.

With National Signing Day quickly approaching, Ole Miss has the 20th-ranked high school recruiting class in the 2024 cycle. That’s 11th in the SEC. It’s a class that Lane Kiffin is supplementing with what is currently ranked as the third best transfer class, according to the On3 2024 College Football Team Transfer Portal Rankings.

Lane Kiffin details boost that players returning gives Ole Miss

One thing that has Lane Kiffin excited is the boost that comes from players returning to Ole Miss.

“I’m very pleased with how many guys came back. A lot of the guys who were ‘tweener’ guys going back and forth would have been draft picks but maybe not as high as they’d like,” Kiffin said.

“It’s really neat that they feel that way about the program and feel that way about the locker room that they would choose to come back. A lot of times that doesn’t happen because their dream is to play in the NFL. To put that on hold for a year says a lot about the culture in the locker room.”