Lane Kiffin’s College Football Playoff Complaints Are More SEC Entitlement

Ole Miss’s real beef should be with league mate Alabama getting a likely bid, but still, the ACC is the aggrieved party in that decision.

Mississippi Rebels coach Lane Kiffin was unhappy with the College Football Playoff selection committee’s latest rankings. / Stephen Lew-Imagn Images

Lane Kiffin performed an excellent Veruca Salt routine on social media Wednesday, reminding everyone that entitlement never sleeps in the Southeastern Conference.

In reaction to the College Football Playoff rankings release Tuesday night, the Mississippi Rebels football coach rhetorically stomped his foot on behalf of the SEC (really, on behalf of Ole Miss). The league has already gotten more than it deserves—four teams are positioned to earn bids when the 12-team field is revealed Sunday—but Kiffin wants more. Like the spoiled child character in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Kiffin would like another pony.

Now.

“You guys actually meet for days and come up with these rankings??” Kiffin whined on X at the CFP selection committee, tagging the playoff account. “Do you actually watch the quality of players, teams, and road environments … or just try and make the ACC feel relevant??”

Kiffin is an All-American pop-off, but even by his standards this was a wild stance—the league that always gets the benefit of the doubt deserves multiple three-loss teams in the field, really? Let’s put this in its proper context.

One, Kiffin’s beef should be with fellow SEC member the Alabama Crimson Tide, which was gifted what could be the last spot in the bracket on questionable grounds. Two, the ACC is the aggrieved party in that decision, with the 10–2 Miami Hurricanes placed behind 9–3 Tide, so it’s weird to suggest the committee was doing that league any favors. Three, he is reiterating a common-but-dubious claim that SEC “road environments” make all road losses excusable.

“I would welcome anybody in the committee to come down to this league and play in this environment,” Georgia Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart said last month. “It’s a tough place to play.”

It is tough. But is it dramatically tougher than anywhere else?

If life is so damn hard on the road in the SEC, how did Miami beat the Florida Gators’ brains out in The Swamp, 41–17? I mean, playing in Gainesville, Fla., was certainly difficult for the Rebels, who lost to Florida 24–17. So maybe the Hurricanes deserve double credit for winning there.

Perhaps Kiffin missed the California Golden Bears (who finished tied for 14th in the ACC) walking into The Plains and beating the Auburn Tigers. And what about the Louisville Cardinals laying waste to the Kentucky Wildcats in Lexington, Ky., this past weekend, 41–14?

It should be noted that Kentucky is a bad team this season, going 4–8. But one of those four victories—its only SEC win—was in Oxford, Miss., against the Ole Miss Rebels. Shockingly, Kiffin’s own home environment didn’t force the Wildcats to fold up on the spot.

Which road team played best between the hedges against Georgia this season? It sure wasn’t anyone from the SEC. It was the ACC’s Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, who lost an eight-overtime carnival of a game there Friday night, 44–42. Georgia never led in regulation, was outgained by 158 yards and needed two touchdowns in the final four minutes of the fourth quarter to get the game into never-ending overtime.

The SEC won five of the eight on-campus games against ACC opponents this season. Road teams went 6–2, with three wins for each league.

Overall in league play, there was almost no difference between the SEC and ACC in terms of home-field success. SEC home teams went 35–26, a .574 winning percentage. ACC teams went 38–29, a .567 percentage.

As stated Tuesday night, the SEC has earned its respect as the nation’s top conference. It’s fact. But that respect is now bordering on myth-making. No losses are bad losses, life on the road is indescribably difficult, nowhere else could compare and nobody else could even comprehend it. 

A significant portion of the nation didn’t like seeing Alabama get the last playoff spot in 2023 over the Florida State Seminoles. With that history now poised to repeat itself with the Crimson Tide icing out Miami, the cynicism is running deep outside of Dixie. And for one of the SEC’s top coaches to complain that potentially getting three out of seven at-large bids simply isn’t enough, that reeks of excessive privilege.

The SEC and its partner in strong-arming the sport, the Big Ten, either don’t appreciate the potential for damaging the golden goose, or (more likely) they simply don’t care. They’ve pushed for every advantage, raided the competition and destabilized the national landscape—and they still possess the nuclear option to break away and do their own thing. They would get richer, and college sports as a whole would suffer.

What makes the NCAA basketball tournaments—and really every other Division I tournament—a cherished American tradition is its all-comers opportunity. They are national competitions, representing virtually every region. A big tent under which (almost) all are welcome. 

Football has cracked open the door to a more limited version of that, with a 12-team playoff and automatic entry for five conference champions. It’s going to be a great event. But if the seven at-large spots are all inhaled by the SEC and Big Ten (and Notre Dame), it diminishes the diversity of opportunity. If a deserving at-large team from another league is left out, it furthers the suspicion that we are on a path toward a Big Two Invitational. (Just wait until the next iteration of the playoff removes first-round byes for four conference champions.)

The SEC is a perpetual winner in the college football power struggle. It scored another win Tuesday night that could carry over to Selection Sunday. That’s enough winning. Lane Kiffin doesn’t need another pony; he needs to win more games.