From the Peach Bowl: Ole Miss’ Lane Kiffin and Penn State’s James Franklin agree the portal system is broken
ATLANTA — Prior to Friday morning’s press conference the day before the Peach Bowl, many knew Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin and Penn State’s James Franklin had a lot in common.
Each coached at Tennessee schools that play in the Southeastern Conference. Each has coached his team to a ten-win season this year — and what we learned Friday, they each have a similar opinion of the transfer portal and NIL.
“That, to me, is a long discussion in a lot of different areas, whether that’s the calendar, whether that’s they’re employees, do they have real contracts? Do they have public contracts that we would all know what they were, you know, like professional sports. To me, that’s a long conversation of a lot of different areas of a system that’s very broken.“
Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin
Kiffin added that he realized some may criticize him for using the portal as much as he does, but as of now he is following the rules.
According to him, those are unintelligent rules.
“It makes no sense, and it doesn’t happen anywhere in professional sports to have a system like this, where, again, you have free agency that now you can go in whenever you want and go in multiple years and change teams whenever you want and you can change teams before postseason happens. I don’t know why that’s really good, and it certainly isn’t good for academics, as they continue to transfer, continue to lose credits. This was, in my opinion, not thought out at all.”
Coach Lane Kiffin
Franklin echoed Kiffin’s message and intimated he was just saying out loud what others are thinking.
“(UCLA coach) Chip Kelly made some comments a few weeks ago, and I think he said some things publicly that a lot of coaches have been talking about privately for a while,” Franklin said.. “I think Lane obviously brings up some really good points as well.”
So, the two coaches have identified the problem. The question is how can the system be fixed?
Franklin had an idea.
“I think at the end of the day, and I’ve said this before, I think the reality is a commissioner of college football would be valuable,” Franklin said.
“I think there’s a reason for a commissioner of college football to be able to work with the commissioner of the NFL because I think the NFL should be working with college football. Then I think the commissioners of the major conferences really all need to get into a room together and really spend some time working through all these issues.”
Coach James Franklin
But before these issues could be discussed, there is some unfinished business. Kiffin and Franklin must face off tomorrow at 11 a.m. CT.
Each team will be looking to reach a milestone. Ole Miss has never won 11 games in program history, while Penn State looks to become the only team to win each of the New Year’s Six bowl games.
Yet, when the clock strikes all zeros in the Mercedes-Benz Stadium, both coaches will put their minds toward repairing a broken system.
“We could talk about this for a long time,”Franklin said. “Right now, the way I see it, the commissioners of the conferences are the best people to solve these problems. Get them all into a room together. You could have representation from the NCAA as well, the NFL, and sit down and really start from scratch, a whole new calendar, a whole new model, recommendations. I think that’s how this is really going to get done moving forward. But it needs to happen, and I think it needs to happen quickly.”
The message from these two coaches is clear — an improvement cannot happen soon enough.
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.
