'Disaster!' Lane Kiffin, Rebels Benefitting From Broken NIL, Transfer Portal Systems

Ole Miss Rebels head coach Lane Kiffin has never been shy when discussing flaws in the new world of college athletics. He has also never been shy about using those flaws to his advantage.

This is a new era of college athletics. To suggest otherwise would simply be folly.

The advent of NIL legislation and the transfer portal have turned college sports (especially football) upside down over the last three years. Ole Miss Rebels head coach Lane Kiffin referred to the new landscape as a "disaster" last year at SEC Media Days, but that doesn't mean he won't take advantage of the modern times.

In fact, he has embraced them, in a sense.

“I also said to make sure you understand I’m not complaining about it,” Kiffin said in a recent interview with On3. “And I’m not sitting here complaining and not using it.

“It just probably sounds strange to a lot of people for me to say disaster when we’re out there — some would say — maximizing it as well as you can and as well as anybody. 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.”

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Kiffin has also seen a lot of pushback on the changes in college football. To quote Brad Pitt's portrayal of Billy Beane in Moneyball, "adapt or die" is Kiffin's belief. If you don't employ these new tactics in college football, you won't be around for very long.

“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,” Kiffin 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.”

Also like the plot of Moneyball, sometimes you find certain players to be unaffordable or, at the very least, asking for an amount of money that prohibits building the rest of your roster. Kiffin didn't name anyone specifically, but running back Quinshon Judkins notably left the program in January via the portal, and he has also lost some portal commitments this offseason to other Power Five programs.

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“You’ve got to let someone go,” Kiffin said, “because they’re saying they want this much money but you can get four other SEC starters for the money that one player is demanding.”

Kiffin has earned the title of "Portal King" during his time in Oxford, and it's easy to see why. After an 11-2 season in 2023, he and his staff added a plethora of transfer talent this offseason, including names like Juice Wells (WR), Walter Nolen (DL), Princely Umanmielen (EDGE) and Chris "Pooh" Paul (LB).

You can read Kiffin's entire interview with On3 on the state of college athletics here.