Bohls: Ole Miss' Lane Kiffin holds court on his prolific use of transfer portal

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — During his interview session at the last of the SEC football media days on Thursday, the unflappable Lane Kiffin was slightly taken aback by what he called “the strangest question” he got all day.

A radio reporter from Alabama prefaced the question by saying he himself often gets mistaken for the devilish Ole Miss head coach. He even sent a picture of a younger, goateed Kiffin to his own mom, who confusingly thought it was her own son.

A bemused Kiffin told the reporter to embrace it and then playfully quipped, “What’s your mom’s name? I’ve got to ask my dad some questions.”

In actuality, there is but one Lane Kiffin, partly because there’s not enough space in the college football world for another coach who is so colorful, so fire-from-the-hip and who unabashedly tells the truth, or his version of it, no matter whom it might offend.

Kiffin went on to say when strangers bump into him in public and ask if he indeed is Lane Kiffin, he oft responds, “No, I hate that dude.”

He knows better than anyone that there are without question some legitimate Kiffin haters out there, most of them probably at Texas A&M, which the fourth-year Rebels coach loves lampooning at every chance.

More: Bohls: Alabama's Nick Saban baking the cake and still hungry for another title

Kiffin, old pal Steve Sarkisian go way back

Not that the Aggies are his only foil, of course. He was in full stride Thursday, blasting the transfer portal system at the same time as he heartily embraces it while offering his own blend of insight and sarcasm.

Just this week he trolled Sooners fans when he spotted a car with Oklahoma plates and the specialized license that read “SILENCE.” Kiffin took a shot of it, tweeted it and tagged good friend Steve Sarkisian in clear reference to the Texas head coach’s 49-0 beatdown of the embarrassed Sooners last October.

Kiffin rarely errs on the side of silence. He never misses the opportunity to show off his smart-alec humor and playful side at whoever’s expense. That explains why his 13,800 tweets have drawn a shade under 630,000 followers. Sarkisian lives at the other extreme and rarely bothers to tweet with only 2,868 remarks and 135,000 followers.

Unlike his perpetual adversary Jimbo Fisher, Kiffin has only the nicest things to say about Sark, who succeeded him as Nick Saban’s offensive coordinator at Alabama.

“I have a great relationship with Sark,” Kiffin said. “We were both part of Pete Carroll’s (USC) staff where we had 34 straight wins and, if we can tackle Vince Young, three straight national championships. That was really cool to go through that with him.

“We’ve stayed close. I think he’s doing awesome there, and the way he’s flipped the roster and recruiting at such a high level and signing Arch (Manning). And I think the future is extremely bright for Texas football.”

More: On Second Thought: Sarkisian, Ewers from Big 12 Media Days on lofty Big 12 expectations

He hasn’t been nearly as kind to the Aggies. He’s poked Fisher at every turn and ridiculed A&M and its “higher salary cap” than nearly every other school.

The good and bad of the transfer portal

Quite frankly, however, no coach has invested more into the transfer portal than the 48-year-old Kiffin. He has evolved into the king of the portal but spent almost his entire Thursday morning session with the media decrying the radical changes with massive transfers and name, image and likeness deals that have totally turned college sports upside down.

His Ole Miss program added 40 new players, including 25 transfers, since last season, but the Rebels also saw a staggering 32 players leave the program through the portal. Similarly, South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer said he brought in 38 players as roster turnover has become almost a daily concern for coaches.

Kiffin works the portal so feverishly that he added two quarterbacks from other schools in Oklahoma State’s second all-time passing leader and second winningest Cowboys quarterback Spencer Sanders as well as LSU’s Walker Howard. And neither may see the field.

USC transfer Jaxson Dart is the Rebels' incumbent quarterback and likely starter for a team that started out 7-0 last season to rank No. 7 nationally. But Ole Miss cratered with one win the rest of the way and a bowl loss to Texas Tech to finish at 8-5.

More: Vanderbilt hopes to continue winning ways against Texas once Longhorns join SEC

“It’s created a lot of issues and roster changes,” Kiffin said of the new rules. “I’m not complaining about it because we take advantage of free agency. But at the same time I don’t think that’s really good for college football. These massive overhauls of rosters every year really is not in the best interest of college football.

“So we’ve got professional sports because that really is what we are, what’s been created now. And there’s no caps on what guys can make or what teams’ payrolls are.”

Kiffin: Between NIL and portal issues, there's a lot to fix

For those who suggest Kiffin is speaking out of both sides of his very vocal mouth, he’s really not. He honestly bemoans the glacial shift of college athletics and its unstable future at the same time he embraces the changes because it’s the system in place and it works best for perennial also-ran Ole Miss, which hasn’t won an SEC title since 1963.

However, Kiffin has helped take the Rebels to three straight bowls and a 23-13 record with a run-heavy offense behind Quinshon Judkins, whose 16 touchdowns and 1,567 rushing yards led the SEC last year. Ole Miss ran the ball 63 times one game against Georgia Tech.

If Judkins and a few of his multitudes of transfers produce quickly, the Rebels could rise through the ranks, and Kiffin could be in demand for a higher-profile Power Five job as he was for the Auburn opening last fall.

He was canned at both Tennessee and USC before resurrecting his career with Alabama and then as a head coach at Florida Atlantic before moving to Oxford.

More: SEC notebook: Conference expansion is opening recruiting Texas for Florida, other schools

Without the rich tradition and resources of some programs, Kiffin could well become a candidate for better jobs if he can produce a 10-win season as he did in 2021. Splurging in the portal is the best way to achieve that.

“We're like still learning names, but we know (their old) schools,” Kiffin said. “There's the receiver from that school, there's the tight end from that, there's the receiver from that, the quarterback is USC. Like, wait, our whole skill roster was from some other school. It’s like we're an NFL team, like we drafted them from somewhere.”

And they’ll switch schools at the drop of a hat. They might be mad because backup players make more dough than they do. Or they slipped on the depth chart because of a new transfer. Or the strength coach yelled at them and hurt their feelings. Loyalty is fleeting these days.

But the bottom line is now the main factor.

“The No. 1 thing they decide on is money, their salary,” Kiffin said. “I think you guys would have done that when you were 18. You can't fault them.”

When I asked where Ole Miss’ boosters rank, relative to the other 13 SEC programs, in terms of their deep pockets and engagement with recruits, Kiffin bit his tongue, something he rarely does.

“I am not about to start putting rankings out on boosters from top to bottom in the conference,” he said before pausing and drawing laughter. “God, I want to so bad.”

Rare is it that he refrains from speaking his mind. He probably wouldn’t even consider ranking Texas Tech, but its athletes have reported almost $8 million in NIL money after just two years, the Dallas Morning News reported. That pales in comparison to the $15.5 million that Longhorn athletes have earned through NIL deals. A&M athletic director Ross Bjork said Aggie athletes have made more than $10 million over two years.

The money is real, the changes are real, and coaches and schools are dealing with them on the fly without much of a blueprint for how to proceed.

“I mean, I was just thinking on the plane ride over here,” Kiffin said. “What if you had that in other sports? Tom Brady, A’Ja Wilson, Lionel Messi, LeBron James, what if every year those guys can opt to free agency or twice a year, and they have no long-term contracts?”

Quite simply, as Kiffin put it, college sports have wandered headlong into a pay-for-play system with the biggest schools with the most aggressive and richest donors paying athletes to come to their place.

“So there's kind of your state of the union of what all coaches are dealing with around the country,” he said. “And really, it’s a poor system that isn't getting better and is now going to get worse with this. We'll deal with it like we do with everything else. But somehow, it's got to get fixed.”

Kiffin spoke his considerable piece. And now he can get back to trolling the Aggies and Sooners.

Covering SEC media days

All 14 schools participated in the annual SEC media days this week in Nashville, Tenn. Follow the weeklong coverage of American-Statesman staffers Kirk Bohls and Thomas Jones on hookem.com.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Ole Miss's Lane Kiffin bemoans but accepts transfer portal system