LSU football has their new football coach, and Lane Kiffin shared his first official words in that role Monday afternoon, speaking for about 40 minutes in front of assembled reporters and Louisiana dignitaries.
The 50-year-old coach was contemplative and complimentary as he discussed his decision to leave Ole Miss where he's coached for the past 6 seasons to join one of its chief rivals. He also detailed the hangups that occurred in his attempts to remain as coach of the team through their upcoming College Football Playoff bid, as well as the strong reactions from fans as he chose to depart from Oxford.
Hear the full introductory press conference for new LSU head coach Lane Kiffin in the player above. Can't see the embed? Click here.
Here are the top quotes from Kiffin's introductory press conference:
On why he chose to make the switch to LSU
“I can sum it up by saying this place is different, and having watched this place for a long time, having been on the other sidelines in this stadium, this place is different, and that’s why we’re here. We have a lot of work to do with that but I’m very grateful for the opportunity to lead one of the elite programs in all of sports. ... The last 6 years of my life have been the best 6 years of my life and I owe that to all the players, all the assistant coaches and the people of Oxford. It was amazing. It will forever be a major part of my story. I’m so grateful for those relationships an all those people that I got to meet, but the opportunity at LSU, as I said before, is just different.
Someone very close to me reminded me this week in this decision, that LSU is the best job in football. When you take the history, tradition, passion and the great players in the state of Louisiana, no one can argue that when you’re in Tiger Stadium on Saturday night, there is nothing like it. This place is built for championships with championship expectations. We understand that, but as an elite competitor, that’s exactly what you want and that’s why we’re here.”
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What advice did you get in this process?
“Everybody that I talked to outside of the state that I was in all basically said the same thing, OK, they all said, man, you are going to regret it if you don’t take the shot and you don’t go to LSU. It’s the best job in America with the best resources and to win it, and it’s obviously been done here before by a number of people.”
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On the optics of leaving Oxford, claims Ole Miss fans tried to run him off the road
"Time heals a lot of things, and having gone through in this conference before, I sure hope that happens. ... It is, man, the passion of the SEC. So I understand that so I don't get emotional with it yesterday like so many people get emotional, you know, like that. They change like that. Because we spent six years there. That airport scene and Knox and I driving and people trying to run us off the road, man, and the things they said to us. Then we got here, and we had been here for six minutes and how we love you, Coach, you're the best ever. We have only been here six minutes. We haven't done anything for you yet.
"But that's the SEC. I've been around it long enough to know that, and it's just the passion of the SEC. I'm not upset at those reactions by fans, by people. I think that people get really upset when you leave somewhere because they feel hurt because you're doing a really good job. They ain't going to the airport and driving from all over, okay, to say those things and yell those things, okay, and try to run you off the road if you were doing bad. I just look at it as passionate people in the SEC, and that it means that they really liked what we were doing there. Because the way the players played, because the way the assistant coaches coached and the performance we put out on the field is why we ended up in the situation we are having to decide from all these different places."
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On how NIL factored in to this decision
"I said through the process I'm never going to make a decision on money, and I'm telling you right now, I don't know what my contract is here. ... Nor did I know at the other places what the numbers were. Because I said in the beginning -- I told Jimmy Sexton, don't tell me the numbers. I want to make a decision that has nothing to do with money for me. Now, tell me the numbers and the plan for what the money is for the players, because that's everything in that area to me. Not what I make. What they make to understand how can you build this? If you are going to make a change and you're going to move and all these people are going to move and you're going to do all this and go through that, which was a very challenging obviously last 24 hours and in a lot of ways sucked. It's the only way I can describe it.
"It sucked for a lot of people, and there was no way to possibly do it in my opinion any better than we did from a timing standpoint, because it's a bad scheduling system of how it's set up. Eventually hopefully it gets like the NFL where you can't do that in the season and don't have to make those decisions. But in that, it was very important and very critical. Verge and his team had a really, really good plan and even talked to some donors that are part of that plan here to see exactly how does that work. There's a great plan here. There's a great plan of how we can come together with what we bring and what players around the country want to play for us and play in our systems and then have that support to be able to do that so that they want to play for us and they get taken care of financially."
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What's made you so successful in this current college landscape?
"I think we've been very successful because we've had great players. We've been very successful because we've hired great assistants that fit together. I think that college football has changed a lot over the years, and I think that a thing that we do extremely well is we don't just think outside the box. We create a new box.
"The way that we do things is not traditional, and just because in the book of coaching this is how we do it or it was done that way before, we're always looking for new ideas trying to figure things out. That started years ago with the innovative offense and changing the style of offense that we played over the years, having a unique offense that I don't feel like is anywhere else in America by the system that we have and how it's run. Then with that, you know, from high school and into the portal recruiting and embracing that and embracing the portal and figuring out a way to put the best collection of players together where we were at. I think the record shows we did a really good job of that."