Paul Finebaum doubles down on Lane Kiffin's 'hypocritical' comments about NIL, transfer portal

As part of his comments at SEC Media Days, Lane Kiffin spoke at length on the issues created by NIL and the transfer portal that are currently plaguing college sports, particularly football. Like most coaches, Kiffin isn’t against the freedoms of NIL and the portal, but he does recognize the toll they’ve taken since being put in place a few years ago.

At the same time, no high-profile coach besides Deion Sanders has hit the portal harder than Lane Kiffin and Ole Miss these last few years. Just this offseason, the Rebels returned their starting quarterback but went out and grabbed two other solid QB transfers, including the longtime starter for Oklahoma State.

Not so fast, says Paul Finebaum. After hearing Kiffin’s comments and seeing what he did in the portal the last few years, the SEC Network analyst was a bit fed up with the hypocrisy and aired his grievances on Get Up to Mike Greenberg on Friday morning.

“I found it hypocritical,” Finebaum said of Kiffin’s comments. “He used the portal about as often and effective as any coach in the country. He’s taken quarterbacks from two different schools. Not only that; he’s also talked about how players are being ripped off his roster and there’s nothing you can do about it if the player has a bad day.”

Finebaum then really went in on Kiffin the hypocrite:

“But I mean, Lane Kiffin, let’s not forget, has been doing things like this throughout his collegiate career. He left Tennessee in the middle of the night to go to USC — I mean, left the program in shambles in 2010. And let’s not forget, last year Greenie, we talked about it on this program: Lane Kiffin was heading to Auburn. Reports were he had already accepted the job while his team simply imploded, losing five of six.”

“So it’s true that it’s legalized cheating but everyone knows that. This is two years old. I found it odd that Lane Kiffin picked this moment to go off on NIL.”

Greenberg then suggested that… while Kiffin may be a hypocrite, could he also be correct about the landscape of the current transfer/NIL situation?

According to Paul Finebaum:

“He is right. And college football has become professional football. But that isn’t really news, and I say that because two years ago, NIL came into effect, and yeah it was intended to reward the player for their name, image and likeness. But everyone knew that wasn’t going to be the case. The big schools were able to get more money.

“The real issue is not so much the players making money, it’s the ability for schools to literally walk in and rip a player off the roster and pay him to do so. Or a player going to his head coach and saying, ‘hey, I’m going to this school if you don’t pay me this.’

“It favors the rich, but what doesn’t? And maybe at some point college football will follow the NFL model a little bit with a cap. But quite frankly, that’s where we are. And yeah, he’s right but it isn’t breaking news.”

Kiffin may have some valid points here, per Finebaum, but it’s hard to feel too bad for him based on his program’s own track record with the portal, along with the fact that all of these issues have been around for two years now and it may simply be time to get used to it.