Typically, the SEC football season commences in the minds of fans with fall camps in August. Everything leading up to those restarts is frequently described as the ‘Talking Season.’ In Atlanta this week, there will be a lot of talk and some of it will actually be meaningful. Alabama football fans can keep a scorecard for who will win SEC Media Days this week. That too is part of ‘Talking Season.’
So far, the leading coach is a pre-Media Days favorite, Ole Miss Head Coach, Lane Kiffin. We’ll use a golfing term and call Kiffin the leader in the clubhouse.
Kiffin was a big winner on Monday, outdistancing LSU’s new coach, Brian Kelly and Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz. The other two provided their fans what they wanted to hear. Kiffin did too, but he went beyond the norm.
The entire Lane Kiffin – SEC Media Days session can be seen below.
Lane can’t avoid Alabama Football questions
Lane had to expound on a couple of Alabama football-related questions and was able to talk about his 2022 team before the conversation turned to NIL. Kiffin was fully prepared for answers.
"I think ideally, if we’re going to be in an NIL world, somehow you’re going to do it right, it’s going to get capped so that there’s some way of controlling it and keeping playing fields close to the same.Otherwise, you’re just going to have these glaring differences within Division I football based off of what I’ve said before, their salary cap."
Later, following another NIL question, Kiffin answered,
"It’s like a payroll in baseball. What teams win over a long period of time? Teams that have high payrolls and can pay players a lot. We’re in a situation not any different than that."
Earlier in the question and answer session, Kiffin explained the unworkable situation of boosters, choosing and buying players outside of the control of coaches.
"If you have boosters out there deciding who they’re going to pay to come play, and the coach isn’t involved in it, how does that work? They could go pick who they want, pay him however much. Are the boosters going to tell you who to play, too? When they don’t play, how is that going to work out?"
There is no doubt, that Alabama football coach, Nick Saban agrees with every Kiffin quote in this post. Saban has been cautious in comments after the Jimbo Fisher brouhaha. Kiffin does not have the burden of being a college football statesman – and his personality frees him to speak his mind.
His closing comments on Monday got to the core of the NIL mess.
"I said day one, you legalize cheating, so get ready for the people that have the mostmoney to get players. Now you have it. It is what it is."
There is another good reason for Kiffin being so candid. He knows Ole Miss boosters have limits to their resources in bidding wars for players. As such, Ole Miss has less to gain from NlL deals for recruits.