Dollars Over Sense: Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin talks about conference realignment, effects on student athletes
OXFORD, Miss. — According to Lane Kiffin, money talks and college athletic traditions walk.
The fourth-year Ole Miss head coach was asked Monday what he thought about college conference realignment.
“(It) is not good for college athletes,” Kiffin said after Monday’s practice. “I think it’s really sad for fans, you know, that want to travel to games.”
Recently Washington and Oregon decided to leave the Pac 12 and join the Big Ten. Those two schools join Southern Cal and UCLA who announced last July, 2022 they were headed to the midwest to join the B1G. Actually, with schools like Maryland and Rutgers in the Big Ten, it is not a midwestern conference anymore — it is coast to coast.
To put that into perspective, when the Rutgers tennis team has to play at Washington, it will be a 5,800 mile round trip from East Brunswick, New Jersey to Seattle, Washington. Adding to that is the missed class time for the student-athletes.
“You know we’re just talking about football, but let’s talk about all the sports that now have to fly around the country. They play weekdays, they get back at four in the morning, they have to go to school, parents aren’t going to be able to see near as many games.”
Coach Kiffin on conference realignment
Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz concurs with Kiffin on the effects on student athletes.
"What cost is it to those student-athletes?"#Mizzou football coach Eli Drinkwitz commented on the direction of college athletics right now ⤵️ says it's a football decision that will affect A LOT more than just football teams.
Long answer, but worth a listen pic.twitter.com/UVDtmzI37d
— Nathalie Jones (@NathalieABC17) August 5, 2023
Other teams have left the Pac 12 to move to the Big 12. That leaves the Pac 12 with just four teams: Oregon State, Washington State, Cal and Stanford.
Monday, it was released the Atlantic Coast Conference is open to negotiate with Cal and Stanford to join that conference. That will give the ACC schools that are near the Atlantic Ocean and two near the Pacific.
Kiffin believes there is one reason for all the realignment — dollars over sense.
“It’s obviously about money,” Kiffin said.
“Anybody that says these decisions, ‘well they weren’t about money or money was a small factor,’ no you don’t do that to all your student-athletes. That’s not the betterment of a student-athlete at all. It is what it is about money. Like we do, call what it is. Again, I hope nobody gets on these 17 and 18-year-olds that make decisions based off NIL money when all these universities are doing that. It’s just the tradition part. You talk about 100 years of tradition just washed up for some more money.”
Coach Kiffin
Kiffin has also been critical of the transfer portal in the past, although he freely admits he has taken full advantage of it. He equates it to NFL free agency and Monday he was asked about the possibility of college football adopting another NFL characteristic — preseason games.
“I haven’t really thought about that because it’s never really come up,” Kiffin said. “The spring thing has come up where they’ve talked about maybe playing one spring game or something, but I’ve not been a part of discussions about that. So, I haven’t given much thought to that. I mean just in these few seconds of thinking of it, I could see where there’d be a use of that, but I’m sure that creates other problems too.”
Kiffin foresaw the problems that came with both the transfer portal and Name, Image and Likeness.
Perhaps he knows what he is talking about.
Ole Miss begins the season against Mercer in Vaught-Hemingway Stadium Sept. 2. Kickoff is set for 1 p.m. and will be broadcast by the SEC+ Network.
(Feature image credit: Ole Miss Athletics)
Steve Barnes
Steve Barnes joins The Rebel Walk staff as a senior writer and brings a trifecta of journalistic experience. As a writer, he has covered college sports for Rivals.com, Football.com and SaturdayDownSouth.com as well as served as a beat writer for various traditional newspapers.
He has been a broadcaster for arena football and several national tournament events for the National Junior College Athletic Association as well as hosting various shows on radio.
A former sports information director at Albany (Ga.) State University and an assistant at Troy and West Florida, he has helped host many NCAA conference, regional and national events, including serving five years on the media committee of the NCAA Division II World Series.
Barnes, a native of Pensacola, Fla., attended Ole Miss in 1983-84, where his first journalism teacher was David Kellum. The duo has come a long way since that time.
He will bring a proven journalistic track record, along with a knack for finding the out-of-the-ordinary story angles to The Rebel Walk.
Barnes continues to reside in Pensacola a mere ten minutes from the beach because he does have taste and a brain.
