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Lane Kiffin reflects on Auburn opportunity, how it impacted Ole Miss
By Keith Farner
Published:
Lane Kiffin has reflected on the opportunity to take the Auburn job at the end of last season, and said in an interview with ESPN that if the situation happened a decade ago, “I don’t know that decision would’ve gone the same way.”
In short, Kiffin said he’s more mature, and the changing dynamics of college sports suggest that Ole Miss can compete on a level with Auburn in terms of the transfer portal and name, image and likeness.
He had confidence in the program before, but, he says, “I have more confidence than I would’ve prior to this system.”
“Really,” he said, “it’s only happened once. So because of the portal and the one-time transfer, that helps your ability outside of those programs that you would put in that group that signs top-five classes every year.”
Outside of the bluebloods like Alabama, Georgia and Ohio State, the portal and NIL allow programs like Ole Miss to plug players in to replace NFL departures, Kiffin said.
Meanwhile, on one hand, Ole Miss faithful saw the Auburn headlines as a distraction, the Ole Miss Grove Collective reported that it topped $10 million in funding, and had so much membership traffic that the web site crashed.
“So you can look at it and say, all right, there’s something we wish wouldn’t have happened and the whole Auburn thing was a distraction,” Kiffin said. “But you can also look at it and say, if that didn’t happen, what would the collective be? And not just in what we signed in the last portal and recruiting class, but the future? Or, more importantly, keeping our own players.”
That’s why Kiffin has bought into the collective, and another example was star running back Quinshon Judkins also returned.
“If you don’t have a good collective, you’re going to lose your own players and then you’re really in trouble,” Kiffin says. “I don’t care, you can pick an all-star coaching staff, if they don’t have a collective, they’re not going to win. So when you find a guy that wasn’t a five-star recruit — Quinshon — and you lose that, you can forget about it. How are you ever going to sign really good players? Because they’re going to say, ‘Wait, your own guy that was there and had all this success, he’s not even going to stay. Why am I going to go there? Why transfer and then when I get there all the good players are going to leave?'”
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
