Curled up at the foot of the office door, moaning and moaning, his tail hooked and his legs outstretched, there is a yellow lab puppy named Juice.
As soon as Lane Kiffin’s door opens, Juice rushes in. She is one of the many new additions here to Ole Miss, such as the 13 signatories of the team’s transfer portal, a class that crowned Kiffin as the “King of the Portal”. Kiffin himself also has a new look. She has lost 32 pounds in the last 18 months. He is the lightest he has been since his days as head coach at USC almost a decade ago.
“I think I’m the only person who came to Mississippi and lost weight,” he laughs.
But Kiffin is not here in his office on a warm May day in Oxford, Mississippi, to talk about his weight or his new dog. Answering several questions during a nearly hour-long interview, Kiffin brings Sports Illustrated into the world of the current college football recruitment landscape, thrown into what many describe as “chaos” by new rules of name, image and likeness (NIL).
Often blunt and rarely politically correct, Kiffin opens up to a NIL concept that has evolved into promoters and impeller-driven collectives, he says, paying players incentives to attend college programs. The issue was at the center of a public discussion last week between Jimbo Fisher and Nick Saban.
Two days before the exchange broke out, Kiffin told SI that 100% of high school players choose schools based on the highest NIL guarantee, not blame them. Despite those who say otherwise, he believes that the current model is in fact sustainable, but it will produce awkward dressing room environments where drivers are evolving into team owners, manipulating training decisions, and so on.
Incentives disguised as NIL are widening the gaps in FBS, he says, further separating Group 5 from Power 5, but also creating more separation within Power 5. NIL will allow Saban to win more championships, he says, and he does. I don’t think the 70-year-old Alabama coach will ever retire.
Finally, in a dose of honesty and reality that few care about publicly admitting, Kiffin doesn’t understand how college football has yet to move into a professional model.
“We’re a professional sport,” he says, “and they’re professional players.”
Kiffin spoke openly with SI about NIL and its impact on college football.
Marvin Gentry / USA TODAY Sports
Sports Illustrated: From your perspective, what is the status of NIL and where is it going?
Lane Kiffin: I said from the beginning that players should charge. They do the work. Why it should be limited to a scholarship check, I disagree. And they shouldn’t be [paid] all the same. This is not what happens in the real world. Why does your best player charge the same as your worst? This is not real life. There is simply no system. It was “Okay, open it!” No system behind it. I’m sure some people saw these things coming, and a lot of people didn’t.
These groups basically did what it was like to cheat before it was legal. You had no rules behind it. You created something that would have a lot of problems. To think that these things would not go in this direction, once you allow the promoters to do what they want …
YES: How much money does NIL determine where a recruit attends school?
LK: You take a 17-year-old who, many of them, doesn’t come from money and the family doesn’t come from money … if someone tells you that their NIL is not number 1 … take 100 of them and ask about the number 1 who will make the decision … it’s not the size of the stadium, not the coach, not the campus or the conference, number 1 will be the money.
And how would you blame them? A professional player already has money, and usually follows the money [in free agency]. So when you don’t have it and you have three or four years left to make money in the NFL, you take what is guaranteed. How can you blame them when so many of them never make it to the NFL? How come you don’t take it?
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Recruitment has changed completely. I joke about it all the time. Facilities and all that. Go ahead and build facilities and these great weight rooms and training rooms, but you won’t have good players if you don’t have NIL money. I don’t care who the coach is or how hard you recruit, that won’t make you any money.
YES: As a coach of a program that is out of the top 10-15 in the sport, how did you navigate those waters?
[Writer’s note: Historically, Ole Miss has resided toward the bottom of the SEC in athletic budget. In 2019, before the pandemic arrived, the Rebels had a budget of $108 million, 12th in the 14-team SEC. That year, the school’s athletic department received $28 million in donor contributions—23rd nationally and roughly a fraction of donations to league rivals like Texas A&M ($85M), Georgia ($52M), Florida ($45M) and LSU ($42M).]
LK: A lot of people sit down and say, ‘Oh, it’s going to go away. The NCAA will fix it! ‘ Okay, go ahead and wait. As a coach and AD, you will not be there. There will be new coach and AD. Is here. I don’t spend time like the others, ‘How long is it here? How will they fix it !? ‘ I do not care. Is here.
I have to introduce people [boosters] to say, “Hey, that’s why it has to be done.” [Resistance to it] it would be like still being piled up [and using] a crime of self-formation. People tried to avoid it. ‘We’re not doing that shit!’ Almost all of these people are out of work.
You can evolve like great programs and great coaches like Nick Saban do. It has evolved where it could have been stubborn. That, to me, is the case. Sit down and say this will go away like they did with the offense, and then they will be fired.
MORE: As coaches discuss NIL, there is a solution to distance leagues
YES: Is there a solution to this?
LK: What seems simple is that there is a lid. How come we are not a professional sport? What’s the difference? [Players] they are making money. They can apply for free agency. We are a professional sport, and they are professional players. Workers hired without a contract. They can go out whenever they want. And how come you don’t see that unless there are rule changes around caps and contracts, how come all the elite college players don’t at the end of their season? [entering the portal]? … Let’s be realistic, in professional sports, if you’re a player’s agent, and the player can opt for free agency and go back to where they want after testing the waters, which says, “No, I won’t.” do this unless there is a penalty?
Why didn’t Bryce Young enter the portal? If you’re advising Bryce Young, why don’t you go in and go to Nick Saban’s office and say, “Hey, I want to be here, but I have to protect myself, so I’ll go in. match the one out there.The boy would do 10 times what he would have done.How come this won’t happen all the time?
YES: What’s the wildest thing you’ve ever heard or seen, and is it sustainable?
LK: Now you have kids going to schools, and some haven’t even visited. [They sign] because of their NILs. You have to think that he has come to stay. To say that it is not sustainable, why? Ten years ago, no one would have said that schools would pay coaches $ 10 million a year. Well, now they do.
When people argue and say that there is no way donors can come up with the money to pay players so much? Wait, these are the same donors who pay $ 30 million to a coach when they fire him! But won’t they raise $ 20 million a year for players? Yes, they are. It just means they won’t give it to other things on campus, such as facilities.
If there’s one thing people with big money are motivated to do, they do it. Everyone wants to have an NFL team. It’s essentially like you’re a minority owner if you’re a big investor [in a collective]. You can show up on Saturday and see your product.
It is sustainable.
YES: How will or will this affect the locker room?
LK: There are all sorts of problems approaching. Suppose the reports are true and a high school quarterback earns $ 6 million to $ 8 million. How will this work? How do you get into the locker room? Will coaches have to play with him, or will donors get angry when he’s not playing? The choice of the first round that the donor writes. I have been in this situation.
People who pay will want this guy to play. If he doesn’t play, how will the substitute quarterback who only wins a scholarship check play?
You have all kinds of problems to come. Professional sport has been doing this for a long time. They have discovered it. Ideally, there should be some kind of plug. Different people make different money, but there is a reason for it.
When they really find out, incoming guys get less. [The NFL] better discovered the limit on rookie contracts years ago. Newbies were doing more than 10-year-old vets. They fixed it. This is a major problem [in college]. Right now, you have good players who make headlines for doing nothing because people are paying those who come in, trying to get them. [in NIL bidding wars].
People will criticize me for saying that “people pay them to come in” saying that this is not what is happening. This is exactly what is happening.
YES: How is this widening the gap in college football, not just between Power 5 and Group 5, but within Power 5, right?
LK: I put it in my head on three levels. Here are your 8-10 teams (top level). This is no different than what is happening. How much money have they invested in hiring, how much money have they invested in facilities. All this. It’s a different way, but it’s more important than anything. It used to be okay. Those guys …