Lane Kiffin says NIL in college football has "legalized cheating"

NIL has forever changed college football. Or, as Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin puts it, "legalized cheating."

NIL has forever changed college football, for the first time allowing players to put money in their pockets without getting chased out by the NCAA.

How different schools and conferences have been able to take advantage of the new NIL rules has been a hot topic around college football for the last year.

Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin is the latest to sound off on how NIL has changed the game.

NIL in college football as 'legalized cheating'

“If you have boosters deciding who they’re going to pay to come play and the coach isn’t involved in it, how does that work?” Kiffin said at SEC Media Days. 

“They just pick who they want and tell you who to play? And when they don’t play, how is that going to work? 

“I’ll say what people don’t say as you know. So, it’s like a payroll in baseball, what teams win over a long period of time? Teams that have high payrolls and can pay players a lot. So we’re in a situation not any different than that. 

“I’m sure other people have said it, I said it day one, you legalized cheating, so get ready for the people that have the most money to get the best players and there you have it. So it is what it is.”

NIL needs regulation - fast

Kiffin also compared NIL rules in college football to professional sports.

“And as far as a general manager to manage that, we aren’t allowed in the current system to manage what they make,” he said. 

“We’re not there yet and I don’t know that we ever will be, that’s just what I said it should be because that’s what any other professional sports, which is what we are now, does.”

Kiffin suggested the creation of a uniform rule around NIL, and that the lack of any sport-wide regulation has made things needlessly difficult.

“This was not thought out at all, and has created a massive set of issues, which I think when most people thought about it from a coaches’ standpoint, could’ve predicted this was gonna happen,” Kiffin said.

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