Ole Miss Rebels head coach Lane Kiffin referred to the current state of college football as a “disaster” in an interview with On3 Tuesday.
Kiffin went on to admit that he has utilized the broken state of college football to its fullest extent as the head coach of the Ole Miss Rebels.
Lane Kiffin is doubling down on statements he made last spring, where he said the same thing about the state of college football.
Ole Miss Rebels HC Lane Kiffin is not complaining about the state of college football
In the interview with On3, Kiffin explains that while he does think the current state of college football is a disaster, he is not complaining.
“I also said to make sure you understand I’m not complaining about it,” Kiffin told On3 in an interview Tuesday. “And I’m not sitting here complaining and not using it.”
Kiffin has seen success with the Ole Miss Rebels during his short time there, but he has used the resources there to take advantage of the current state of college football as well as any other coach in the country.
Kiffin has had two 10-win seasons in the four years that he has been at Ole Miss and he has made a bowl game every single year. He currently sits at 34-15 with the Rebels and he is coming off of their best season yet.
The Rebels went 11-2 with a win over the Penn State Nittany Lions in the Peach Bowl. Although there were plenty of opt-outs in the bowl game, Kiffin and the Rebels offense put up huge numbers on what was one of the most statistically sound defenses in the country.
Before the Peach Bowl, Penn State’s defense was first in yards allowed per game and yards allowed per play with 223 and 3.9, respectively. They were also third in points per game and passing yards per game with 11.4 and 154, respectively.
Lane Kiffin and the Ole Miss Rebels blew the top off of that nationally-ranked defense with 38 points on 540 total yards, and just under 400 of those yards were passing yards (379 from starting quarterback Jaxson Dart). The 6.1 yards per play were put up on a defense that had just lost its defensive coordinator Manny Diaz to the Duke Blue Devils, but the point remains that the Rebels offense under Lane Kiffin can compete with just about anybody.
Jaxson Dart in the first quarter:
• 6/13
• 109 yards
• 1 touchdownDart is dealing
pic.twitter.com/tYwlu1Y7kr— Ensign Gridiron (@EnsignGridiron) December 30, 2023
‘SEC’ chants raining down at the Peach Bowl after Jaxson Dart scores his 4th touchdown of the game pic.twitter.com/I803oxIoqk
— Ensign Gridiron (@EnsignGridiron) December 30, 2023
Lane Kiffin and the Ole Miss Rebels have excelled in the transfer portal/NIL era
The Ole Miss Rebels and head coach Lane Kiffin have utilized the NIL/transfer portal era as well as any coach in the country. Kiffin has fielded one of the best transfer portal offseasons in the country.
The Ole Miss Rebels have the third-best Team Transfer Portal Index according to On3. On3’s Team Transfer Portal Index has a “proprietary algorithm” that “determines if a school has improved its overall team talent, stayed the same, or declined in talent during the transfer window.”
Ole Miss’ Index score of 69 is just one of four teams that have a score over 40. They are the only team in the top 20 of Index scores that have acquired a five-star from the transfer portal. The adjusted NIL value of their transfer portal recruits this offseason is $2.7 million, according to On3.
Kiffin said in the on3 article that he is embracing the disastrous state of the sport.
“It just probably sounds strange to a lot of people for me to say the disaster when we’re out there — some would say — maximizing it as well as you can and as well as anybody,” Kiffin said. “But to me, that tells you how much of a disaster it is. Even though it benefits us, I’m still telling you it’s a disaster even though it benefits us at Ole Miss a lot.”
“You had this other side saying ‘This is ridiculous. The players shouldn’t be paid. This is going to go away.’ There was a lot of that,” he said. “A lot of coaches and administrators thought this is going to go away. From the beginning, I said it may, but it’s going to be a long time from now before it goes away. If you sit around and wait for it to go away, you’re going to be out of a job as an AD or a coach. And your football program is going to be really bad.”
Kiffin, like every other coach in the country, is fairly new to the systems that have enveloped the college football world. It has become clear that coaches who embrace the new system are having more success than the coaches who are stuck in the old ways.
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