The LSU media has spoken with new LSU football coach Lane Kiffin several times since he arrived in Baton Rouge. But on Tuesday at the SEC Spring Meetings in Destin, Florida, it was the first time he had spoken with a group of reporters who cover the SEC, and most of the questions during the 11-minute press conference were about his decision to leave Ole Miss for LSU.
Kiffin went 55-19 at Ole Miss and won at least 10 games in four of his final five seasons in Oxford. He said again on Tuesday that he valued his time there but felt it was time for a new challenge.
“You can have had a wonderful experience, everything you said about those six years, where you needed Oxford at Ole Miss more than they needed you, and that can be totally true, and then you can choose a new challenge,” Kiffin said.
Kiffin declined to answer a question about his current relationship with Ole Miss, and he also sidestepped a question about returning to Oxford with the Tigers for the much-anticipated game on September 19th.
“We got so much work to do before that, we got a huge opener with Clemson,” Kiffin said. “We’ve been back to Tennessee before, so we've got some practice at it.”
Kiffin coached at Tennessee for one season in 2009, but after a second-place finish in the SEC East, Kiffin left the Volunteers for the head coaching job at USC.
He returned to Neyland Stadium in Knoxville a couple of times as the offensive coordinator at Alabama.
But when he returned in 2021 as the head coach of the Ole Miss Rebels, the game had to be paused in the fourth quarter because objects were thrown at him, including a mustard bottle and a golf ball.
Kiffin’s comments about Ole Miss were tame this time.
He is facing a possible reprimand from the Southeastern Conference for the comments he made to Vanity Fair about Ole Miss’s ties to the Confederacy, which makes it more difficult to recruit athletes to live in Oxford as opposed to Baton Rouge.
It is an SEC Bylaw to publicly criticize another member institution, which is why Kiffin could be fined by the league office.
SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey was asked about a possible reprimand and said he doesn’t hand out punishment behind a podium.
Kiffin was also asked why he didn’t take the Florida job.
“They (Florida) have a great program – it really was not about that. It was really about LSU and the belief I had in what we could do at LSU…It really wasn’t about any other program. It was specifically about LSU.”
Kiffin was asked a question about LSU, and that is his latest addition to the coaching staff, former LSU head coach Ed Orgeron.
“Having sat in that seat at the same place is tremendous value, just to bounce things off of somebody who has been there through the ups and downs of it,” Kiffin said.
There is also a comfort level with Coach O, as this will be the fourth time the two have worked together on the same coaching staff.
“Knowing that when he is on your staff, certain things are being taken care of,” Kiffin said.
Kiffin also added that Orgeron will be a great asset in recruiting.
And Kiffin described his experience at LSU as awesome. And it will be awesome when the day arrives when Kiffin is taking questions from the national media, strictly about the LSU job.
But with Lane, that day may never arrive, because questions about his past will always come up.
