Lane Kiffin sounds off on NIL enticement, tampering, how he handles it with Ole Miss players

Now that college athletes can switch schools without penalty and are able to make their own profits off of NIL deals, tampering was an obvious pitfall. Never before had student-athletes been able to move from one place to another so easily nor could they make any money. In 2023, they can do both, which has led to widespread tampering, with players obviously having contact with other programs while still playing for their team, and others even negotiating some NIL money at a new school before they even enter the Transfer Portal.

At the SEC spring meetings this week, Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin was asked how the NCAA can possibly prevent the level of tampering that most folks will tell you is currently running rampant through college sports and especially football.

“But how do you get rid of it? You gotta have major penalties like the NFL, you know, like professional sports do, to get rid of it,” said the Rebel coach. “I don’t think that’s going to happen. You just deal with it. I mean, it’s just part of it and you guys that know me, I just say…okay, you got to accept whatever the rules are or whatever is actually going on around the rules and work with it.”

Kiffin says it’s just the nature of the beast at this point. Sure, harsher penalties may coax players and coaches into tampering less, but you’d be naive to think any amount of punishment would ever rid it from the game completely.

He also noted that one of his own players, who seems to be stud rookie running back Quinshon Judkins, got a lot of attention even while the season was going on last fall. But, per Lane Kiffin, that’s what’s going to happen nowadays when you have a good young player. He’s just hoping that he can keep the players around for a year or two before they all leave.

“You know, we just went through it,” Kiffin said. “I would argue we probably had the most popular pre-portal player in America in our running back because he was only a freshman. So, you know, hey, when you get them, we shouldn’t get them for one, you get them for two years. So it’s just gonna happen.”

It certainly is going to happen a lot more now than it ever used to. Kiffin (or college coaches in general) can’t love having to re-recruit their best players each offseason while also trying to find new talent as well.