Lane Kiffin received a lot of flak after his controversial decision to leave the Ole Miss Rebels for the LSU Tigers right before the playoffs. This was also the program’s first postseason appearance in the CFP era.
The backlash intensified after Kiffin’s recent comments about how segregation made recruitment hard during his time with Ole Miss. On the “Triple Option Podcast,” former Ohio State coach Urban Meyer did not mince his words while calling out the coach.
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He said that Kiffin should have expressed gratitude to the program for giving him an opportunity instead of putting them in the negative spotlight.
“I don’t know if he should have went there,” Meyer said. “You know, he shouldn’t have. He started going to places and, you know, just say great things about the school you’re at. They gave you a chance. …
“You know, coach Kiffin has some issues now. I mean, for people to take chances on him, obviously, he’s a heck of a coach. But, you know, just, all positive, your staff just say all positive, and just go try to win a game. I know that probably won’t happen.”
Lane Kiffin made the comments during an interview with “Vanity Fair,” this month. He said that recruits refused to join the Rebels and play in Baton Rouge. He then compared it to LSU, stating that such “segregation” did not exist in his current program.
Analyst Mike Bratton also criticized Kiffin for his words, stating how it was another addition to his “growing list of falsehoods.”
After all the backlash and criticism, Lane Kiffin issued an apology for his choice of words for Ole Miss during his interview with Vanity Fair.
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He said that the narrative portrayed was not his actual intention, as he was trying to highlight a different issue altogether.
“I really apologize if anybody at Ole Miss or in Mississippi was offended by that,” Kiffin said. “In a four-hour interview, I was asked a lot of questions on a lot of things, and Ole Miss has been wonderful to me and my family.
“I was asked questions about the differences in recruiting, and I said a narrative that we battled there from some out-of-state Black parents and grandparents was not wanting their kid to move to Mississippi. That’s a narrative that coaches have been fighting forever. It wasn’t calculated by bringing it up.”
