'It's Obviously About Money': Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin's thoughts on conference realignment
ATLANTA — The 2022 SEC Football Media Days are in full swing and the immediate topic on everyone’s mind is the drastic change of the college football landscape in the last few months.
Southern California and UCLA announced last month their intentions of moving from the PAC-12 to the BIG 10 in 2024. The Trojans and Bruins are the latest in making major shifts from their long-standing conference home to another Power 5 conference.
Last year it was Texas and Oklahoma who made the announcement they were looking for a new home and the Southeastern Conference welcomed them with open arms in a unanimous vote.
The Sooners and Longhorns are a major topic at this year’s SEC Media Days despite not set to join the conference for another three years, in theory.
Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin offered up his thoughts welcoming the two prestigious programs and the changing shift in conferences.
“It is what it is. There’s some geographic ones that don’t make a lot of sense,” Kiffin said when speaking with members of the local media . “Everything evolves, everything changes. The game’s changed and now we got conferences changing, too. At the end of the day it’s obviously about money not about tradition.”
The SEC is the bell of the ball when it comes to outside schools from outside conferences wanting to join the party.
Last year’s move by the Sooners and Longhorns shook the college football world but then things settled back down for an entire athletic year. Then the two California schools decided to join the the midwestern and northeastern conference last month.
With another seismic shift there is not a sense of urgency within the SEC to want to maybe try and up the ante in adding even more schools. The SEC will be at 16 teams whenever Oklahoma and Texas join the ranks.
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“This is a superleague,” said SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey on Monday. “We’re comfortable at 16. There’s no sense of urgency, no sense of panic. We’re not just shooting for a number of affiliations that make us better. Could they be out there? I would never say they’re not. I would never say that we will.
“We’re going to be evaluating the landscape. I’m not going to speculate. I actually am watching a lot of this activity operating around us, more so than impacting us directly.”
The SEC is not afraid to peacock and tout itself as the premier athletic conference in college sports. The national titles and consistent success speaks for itself.
With that being said the challenge is there in Texas, Oklahoma, Southern California and UCLA to try and join its new peers midstream and try to make their own success within an already dominant conference.
“I just said, it’s a different world. Said it for a long time: the SEC just means more. And it does,” Kiffin said. “It’s different, it’s ahead of the game. Now, over the last five, ten years, the players started coming that didn’t used to come from the Northeast and West Coast very often at all. That transition I feel like started with Alabama especially, and now they’re coming to the SEC.
“That’s a big challenge. I know everything obviously is about money nowadays or else teams wouldn’t be going with playing all over the place, breaking up these awesome traditions.”
