All eyes in the college football world were on none other than Lane Kiffin on Monday when the Ole Miss head coach took the main stage at SEC Media Days. With the cameras pointed in his direction, the Rebel front man harped on how attempts to regulate the ever-evolving landscape of college football have been flawed. On brand, he also took a series of shots at Hugh Freeze during his time at the podium.
Specifically, Kiffin pointed to how his program operated “on a budget” ahead of a federal judge’s approval of the landmark House v. NCAA settlement that allows universities to pay student-athletes up to $20.5 million out of their athletics departments’ coffers. The revenue sharing implementation came with strings attached for name, image, and likeness deals. Now, all NIL agreements worth more than $600 must be approved by a clearinghouse managed by accounting firm Deloitte.
The purpose of having a third-party review deals between a player and an entity not affiliated with the player’s school is to ensure that a “fair market” agreement is reached for a service, while curbing straight-up pay-for-play arrangements.
“If you go back to retention of last year’s players and the portal guys, December, January, we went into that operating under this cap because we were told the settlement was most likely going to get approved and how that would work,” Kiffin said. “It obviously means you can’t sign as many players as you would like at times because you have a budget. So we’re obviously hopeful that we will be rewarded by doing that.”
Kiffin, commonly dubbed the “portal king” for his ability to quickly flip a roster by adding quality players from other colleges to his team, is skeptical that, while his program is reportedly operating by the law of the land, others are gaming the system. And for those who are caught red-handed, Kiffin is curious as to the repercussions that will be levied as officials navigate a brand new terrain.
“I think it’s obvious people aren’t staying within that cap, so I think the whole thing will be, what does that look like? That’s what we don’t know,” Kiffin remarked. “What does it look like when you don’t and what are the punishments for that? Do you win, and that comes later?”
Reiterating his critiques of the system, or an alleged lack thereof, Kiffin acknowledged that the new infrastructure was put in place to remedy concerns that programs with the largest athletic budgets could find ways to exploit NIL opportunities and build stacked rosters. However, he is still concerned that penalties, if any, imposed for budgetary infractions will neither be adequate nor productive.
“It doesn’t seem like that’s working very well. So yeah, I mean, stating the obvious. That was the intention of what was going on because there were so many complaints when NIL started about, okay, everybody has different advantages, and different payrolls,” Kiffin added. “Again, we’ve tried to follow the guidelines because that’s what we were told we needed to do. I’m not saying they’re wrong for doing it. I’m not calling anybody out. If the system isn’t solid enough to prevent that, then we really don’t have a system. So you’re not operating on a salary cap.”
Kiffin did, on the other hand, contend that the new revenue-sharing framework will create a semblance of parity. The Ole Miss coach, entering his sixth season at the helm, believes there will be “one-offs” of five-star players joining programs that are not traditional powerhouses because the bottom line was sufficient, unlike what has been the case in prior years.
In the mix of what could be coined a typical press conference centered around an atypical mouthpiece in the sport, Kiffin touched on his relationship with Hugh Freeze, the Auburn head coach who once had the same gig at Ole Miss.
Kiffin, known to be active on social media, has consistently made Freeze the punchline of an online troll job. Just recently, Kiffin posted multiple fishing-related images and tagged Freeze. When asked about the motive behind the posts, Kiffin chalked it up to a collection of good-natured jabs with no ill will attached. Kiffin has spoken only well about how Freeze treated his brother, Chris, when he worked under Freeze at Ole Miss.
Nonetheless, Kiffin kept the jabs coming. From playfully boasting that he catches bigger fish than his Auburn counterpart, which is often used as a subliminal message that he bested Freeze in pursuit of a recruit, to taking a shot at Freeze for his frequent trips to the links, much to the chagrin of a large sect of the Tigers’ actively online fanbase, Kiffin covered just about all attack lines.
“Well, someone said that coming in here to me. I like Coach Freeze, so I think they think that was something to do with, like, I was fishing, it was golfing. It really wasn’t that. I have a thing with him going back a few years ago when he posted a picture in response to me of like some two-pound bass or something like that,” Kiffin said. “So I kind of always posted bigger-fish pictures back towards him. Had nothing to do with his golf game, which sounds like he’s doing amazing at that. That’s great for him.”
Now that he has concluded his time in the Atlanta extravaganza that is the 2025 SEC Media Days, Kiffin can return to Oxford and prepare a mostly-new collection of starters for an Aug. 30 home opener against Georgia State.
