The evolution SEC Media Days, Lane Kiffin's comments, and a lack of critical thinking
Lane Kiffin was asked a lot of big picture questions at SEC Media Days, and the reaction to his candid answers underscore the worst aspects of modern media
Another edition of SEC Media Days culminated last week. An event that is now the traveling promotional circus for the most successful conference’s most popular sport took center state to officially begin the countdown toward the season.
That description might sound like a jaded dig directed at a function that served little purpose to me personally when I was a reporter, but it isn’t intended to be. I find SEC Media Days to be a fascinating, often cringeworthy — but important — celebration of a sport that we all plan four months of our lives around every year. The evolution of this college football carnival, which will turn 40 years old in July of 2025, underscores how the appetite for college football has grown, as well as the way the we, the consumer, choose to digest the sport.
The event was born in 1985, when less than 100 media members showed up at the Holiday Inn Medical Center in Birmingham, after a few years of having sportswriters fly together like a boy band tour, to interview each program’s coaching staff on campus. My word, can you imagine the tension among SEC beat writers flying on a plane together for multiple days in this current time? Rivals, 247 and On3 would need their own legal counsel on retainer solely for overzealous employees who rent rogue and decided to end up on a no-fly list because they needed to set the record straight with their rival school’s site about recruiting coverage.
The centrally-located concept grew in popularity into a gathering attended by more than 500 Big-J Journalists. Now, in the era in which the SEC Network reigns supreme and college football being the nearly billion-dollar business that it is, this event has naturally been shaped into one most suitable for television. Again, this is hardly a bad thing, it’s simply the way of the world, and a reflection of how we consume content. Fans read newspapers less frequently and watch more TV. Fans care little for detailed notebooks, daily news recaps and printed quotes, and instead gravitate toward (often) out-of-context social media clips and the opinions associated with them by other fans online, mostly produced by television, streaming and other “new media-like” channels. Again, such is the way of the world. While money has dictated so much of the way college football is produced and consumed, I often wonder if the way the day-to-day decimation of it is a product of those big-money shifts, or simply the way consumers prefer to be educated due to technological advances such as the iPhone and social media. While the minutia of that debate is probably a conversation for another day, I believe that Lane Kiffin’s turn at SEC Media Days 2023 — and the way it was consumed and perceived — to be a reflection of why this event has evolved into its current form.
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Kiffin was questioned like he’s President of College Football
When Ole Miss was due up on the podium last Thursday, I assumed that Kiffin, like most other coaches, would be pitched a bevy of questions about the rapidly changing landscape of the industry in which he resides. While I was hardly shocked when those questions came, I was somewhat captivated by the number of “big picture” questions he was fed, versus the amount of questions focused on the football team he’s paid handsomely to coach, to be fascinating.
Kiffin spent 29 minutes, 44 seconds, on the main podium at SEC Media Days. By my (wildly) unofficial count he was asked two Ole Miss-specific questions, at least seven questions about NIL, the portal, and the big picture of college football, and two more that could be categorized as either — one guy asked about the Ole Miss collective and how he’d rank it compared to other boosters and collectives (what a moronic question in that setting), and another asked about roster management. One reporter even prefaced his big picture question by calling Kiffin the “czar of college football.” What that made up title actually means remains unclear.
Given the amount of rapid, significant change within the college football ecosystem over the last two-plus years, Kiffin’s podium experience wasn’t drastically unique. All 14 coaches were asked about the broader, layered topics affecting both the present and future of the sport. And while I am far too lazy to sift through every question each coach was asked and categorize them like I did with Kiffin, it seemed, to me, like the volume of big picture questions Kiffin received was greater, compared to the other 13 coaches. I find this interesting for a couple of different reasons, the first being that Kiffin is seemingly at his best when answering layered, complex questions concerning topics he’s invested in. I often chuckle at Kiffin’s general disinterest and disdain for answering questions from local media. The guy will go through a Monday presser in the Manning Center sounding like his dog just died, and will then leave the room, go into his office and hop on the Dan Patrick Show or Le Batard Show afterward and sound like a completely different person.
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I’ve noticed a similar contrast in the way he answers innocuous questions about depth charts, injuries and game-planning, versus a question about NIL, the transfer portal or a rule change. Even if his demeanor doesn’t visibly change, the depth of the answer is different. Most of the memorable answers Kiffin has given in his weekly presser setting in his time at Ole Miss have been derived from questions that had nothing to do with the program he runs or the product on the field. It’s as if he’s bored beyond belief with the former genre of question and stimulated by the latter. This is neither a good or bad thing, it’s just something I have noticed. My colleague Neal McCready was early on noticing this and has done a terrific job of asking questions that produce interesting content from the often painfully boring Kiffin media opportunities.
Kiffin is also refreshingly honest and witty when lobbed one of these big picture questions. One of the first questions he was asked was about the recent culmination of Tennessee’s NCAA investigation and the seemingly light penalties handed down from a now toothless governing organization whose last claim to fame will now essentially be “we got that madman Hugh Freeze for free pizza and illegal housing bc he was an asshole when dealing with us!”
“Well, that didn't take long,” Kiffin said with a smirk. “I got a lot of thoughts on that case and the case at USC and the case at Tennessee and the penalties and all that. I'm not really going to get into that. We're here to talk about Ole Miss . You know, I’m happy for Coach Heupel. I read where he was ecstatic about the penalties and the $8 million fine. So that kind of probably tells you about how severe the penalties are in their eyes.”
What an incredibly simple yet poignant answer. Again, Kiffin is good at this when he wants to be.
He was asked about artificial intelligence (A.I.) and how that could be implemented in college football.
“Well, I'm the first to say that, when I know a lot about an area, I'm going to answer. If I don't, I don't. The artificial intelligence and using that in recruiting, I don't know about that. I can give you coach-speak and pretend that I do,” Kiffin quipped with a grin.
He was also asked the aforementioned question about “the most aggressive boosters and where Ole Miss boosters rank on that scale.” Kiffin responded as if he was a mischievous middle schooler, tempted to act out while weighing the potential consequence of getting sent to the principal’s office.
“I am not about to start putting rankings out on boosters from top to bottom in the conference,” Kiffin said, as the room of reporters laughed. “God, I want to so bad, though. The Commissioner (Greg Sankey) said, ‘remember, we've grown a lot and you don't have to respond to every question to show everybody you have the answer.’ So I'm going to do that on this situation.”
He went on to give a pretty blunt answer about the nature of recruiting in the NIL era, and that he can’t blame kids for basing decisions solely off money, and that if you actually want booster rankings, to simply look at recruiting rankings to find your answer.
I have no real overarching point to wrap up this segment, other than to reiterate that Kiffin is at his best when he’s asked questions that require him to think. I don’t mean that in a condescending way, because it’s pretty obvious that he’s given a lot of these big picture topics a lot of thought before answering the questions thrown at him. This is evident in the honesty and candidness in which he answers them. It’s why he gets asked so many of them. I appreciate him for that. Rarely will you read or listen to me criticize an athlete or coach for speaking candidly on a subject. One of the many gripes I have about media, social media and online culture is the hypocritical behavior and reaction that coaches and athletes receive when they decide to veer away from coach-speak and canned answers. We complain about them being boring, yet rip them when they’re honest. I prefer candid, brutal honesty, even if I don’t agree or believe what the subject is saying. Doing that takes real courage in this current climate. Speaking of hypocrisy, let’s talk about the media.
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Is the inability to think critically now a job requirement in media?
Among the dozens of gripes I have concerning sports media is the widespread inability to think critically when forming an opinion. It’s become such an epidemic that I now wonder whether this issue is inability, or rather an unwillingness to do so. Perhaps it’s something even more nauseating and nefarious: a job requirement, bred from an insatiable appetite for views and viral clips — a priority that ranks above nuance, common sense and content that makes the consumer smarter.
I tend to believe the job requirement theory now more than ever — that it’s intentional and calculated because television producers and executives believe the consumer is too stupid to desire anything more, and that outrage will generate engagement because the consumer isn’t capable of appreciating nuanced analysis and discussion — and they may be right — but I also find that insulting to the viewer and a strategy that is hard to justify in the face of an entire industry failing, seemingly devoid of entities and individuals who understand how survive and make money.
I bring this up because of a couple of answers Kiffin gave about the transfer portal, and the predictable reaction from a couple of blowhard media talking heads. Kiffin was asked about the current state of the transfer portal and NIL, and the difficulties navigating the lack of regulation around all of it. He gave a long answer in which he noted that he tells players and families all the time that it’s a great time to be a college football player because of the newness of it all, the lack of regulation, and the leverage players have because they’re paid like employees without having real contracts.
“I try to teach our guys like real life, and you know, we say like pro mindset, like we have a pro mindset of how we run the program with our guys and the expectations. So I get it, because they come in complaining. You know, I've been here, or I transferred here and this guy is going to make more money than me. You know what, I'm not saying it's fair, but get ready. That's life,” Kiffin said. “You're going to be in an NFL locker room and you sign a contract, and this new guy makes more money than you. Sorry to say, you want the real truth like I give them, it depends when you went in. Guys make more now than when they went in the portal a year or two ago and they used up their one-time transfer. Hey, I'm just teaching you how life works. It is what it is. You used your window. You don't have the leverage now to go in until you graduate because you can't go in a second time. So there's the truth to what really happens.
“But I teach them, hey, you basically signed a contract, even though you don't have a real contract. You're here to play. You accepted whatever the terms are that you and the collective did, so go play and figure it out after the season.”
Seems pretty straightforward, right? Well, in another question about the portal and how it’s used for NIL leverage, Kiffin rightly pointed out that the system is complete madness, that it’s essentially professional sports without binding contracts, which cultivates a stupid, lawless environment that is not beneficial to anyone in the long-term, despite the positive aspect of players (rightly) having more leverage.
“You really can get paid three times if you want to. You can get paid coming out of high school. You can one-time transfer, go in, get the most money and get paid again. And then you can grad transfer and then get paid again. Eventually you'll not be able to do that, I would think, and have that leverage every semester to be able to do that,” Kiffin said. “We have this NIL, it's great, and this portal, it's great. And I'm not saying I was the only one saying it. Whoa, this is a disaster coming because you just legalized cheating and you just told donors they can pay the players is what you did. And it's supposed to be set up -- well, really it's for your name, image, likeness, for your marketing. But that's not what happened. That's not what's happening. They are getting paid to go to school. So it's pay-for-play.”
I find it hard to believe that any remotely rational human being would disagree with anything Kiffin said. The idea that Kiffin is against compensating players and allowing them to have leverage is utterly insane. For whatever perceived gripes you might have with Kiffin, him being anti-player is simply not an opinion rooted in reality. Ask anyone who has played for him. But that didn’t stop a collection of intentionally obtuse television grifters to capitalize on a popular football coach speaking candidly on a significant issue. Let’s start with the once respectable journalist turned Stephen A. Smith wannabe, Paul Finebaum.
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If you’re unwilling to jump through the unnecessary hoops Musk has created to simply view a tweet, I’ll summarize it for you: Finebaum essentially said Kiffin is a hypocrite because he flirted with taking the Auburn job toward the end of last season. This is somehow considered a remotely intelligent point for the rapidly deteriorating standards that govern ESPN’s primetime morning television. My stance on Kiffin’s handling of the Auburn situation last November is pretty clear. I found it to be immature and unprofessional. But, with that said, it’s not at all hypocritical in this context. If Kiffin had taken the Auburn job, he’d have been bought out of his contract. And while money and contractual buyouts are often (and ironically) a non-factor when discussing the coaching carousel, that doesn’t mean it’s an inconsequential caveat. The sheer existence of contracts is a consequence. Kiffin’s point is underscored by the idiocy displayed by Finebaum: when players transfer on a whim, there is no compensation, there is no buyout, there are no contractual protections for collectives and schools— at least none that we know of in this era of vaguely-constructed NIL deals — and also, none for players, either. Kiffin is a working professional for a state-funded university. He’s not arguing against players earning that same title. He’s simply saying that without some sort of similar classification, this idea of amateurism is a farce that breeds chaos. What is controversial about that?
If that opinion didn’t make you lose enough brain cells for your liking, the next example certainly will.
Again, apologies for the strange tweet implementation, but blame the X Rocket Man, not me.
I never thought I would post a tweet from the Outdoor HotTub Guy from Season 3 of Last Chance U (who was subsequently fired for telling a German player “I am your new Hitler” a year after the show aired), but maybe that perfectly underscores the lunacy of all of this. Outdoor Hot Tub Guy is the only one in the screenshot thinking rationally. In the clip, some ESPN employee who I don’t recognize and am too lazy to look up, argued that, because Lane Kiffin’s roster is littered with transfers, he is a hypocrite for complaining about the structure of the portal. It truly is a mystery as to why ESPN’s ratings are collapsing.
So, to summarize in totality: Lane Kiffin stated that the current state of college football is a disaster, that the transfer portal set-up is bad for the sport and that the schools with the most money will attract the best players, with no guardrails, regulations or consequences. Again, which part of this should you, the reader with a functional brain, disagree with?
Kiffin uses the transfer portal because it’s a resource available to him to build the best roster possible. He’s paid handsomely to do just that. Acquiring talent and winning games is pretty much his entire job description. The debate about whether it’s a smart strategy or not is a conversation for another day. Contrary to beliefs made popular by empty suits on morning cable television, you are in fact allowed to not like aspects of your job while simultaneously participating in them because it’s the best way to thrive in your role. It’s amazing to me that this has to be pointed out. And, as I transition into my final point on this, I realize that it probably doesn’t actually have to be pointed out.
I like to think that you, the reader and subscriber, are a fairly smart sports consumer or are just a rational human being in general. I don’t mean that as a compliment to me or the content I spew to your inboxes, I just figure that if you weren’t, you’d watch ESPN’s first take instead of willingly read this newsletter. The element of all of this disingenuous nonsense that bothers me the most is that it is all seemingly intentional and orchestrated. Paul Finebaum was once one of the most respected columnists in the country and has covered college football for nearly half a century. He’s not an idiot. There’s no way he believes what he’s saying in the clip above. He’s partaking in this hyperbolic bit to drive ratings in July, hoping Kiffin tweets at him or has the urge to go on his show, or that some clown with a newsletter and a decent sized following will spend time and energy talking about him. The fact that he performed this routine on First Take, a show that began with Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless and is the origin of the mind-numbing cesspool that national sports television/radio/talk has become, is almost too perfect.
The frustrating part, too, is that this practice continuously works and is rewarded. Here I sit talking about it. The tweet listed above was the desired outcome, and that’s not a shot at Kiffin for engaging in it. If some wildly uninformed pundit, who had a platform that reached millions of people, made an objectively stupid and uninformed comment about the way you do your job, wouldn’t you want to respond? Would the idea that said person profits from you responding stop you? I doubt it. It’s preying upon human nature.
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It truly is sad what ESPN’s television programming has become. To be fair, spouting intentionally-moronic opinions under the guise of being controversial to attract viewership is not a practice unique to ESPN, they’re just the outlet that makes the disgust resonate the most. I grew up watching ESPN every single day. I was addicted to SportsCenter. I watched Around the Horn and Pardon the Interruption. Hell, I even watched that ridiculous show Jim Rome did, and, for a brief minute, thought he was cool(!). I listened to their radio programming, from Mike & Mike in the morning, to Colin Cowherd and Scott Van Pelt and Ryen Russillo. Now, I cannot name a single show in ESPN’s radio lineup, nor could I tell you what their morning TV schedule is, who is on it, or the last time I have watched it. All I know is that Stephen A. Smith makes like $10 million a year to do a billion different things at the network as it substitutes quality programming for a loud, increasingly-slim echo chamber of ridiculous opinions that the people spouting them don’t even believe.
As confusing as this sports television/media pivot is, television executives aren’t idiots. They aren’t all pivoting in unison to ensure their poor decision making is aligned. They’re doing it for a reason, which I assume is rooted in some idea that it works. That this is what the viewer wants, even if we loudly complain otherwise. We all know fast food is bad for our health, but we eat it anyway. We watch crappy reality TV shows despite knowing inauthentic content. Maybe this actually is what the consumer wants? It’s just perplexing to me because I don’t know anyone personally who watches morning debate shows, nor do I know anyone who desires more argumentative, hot-take content as their preferred flavor of analysis. Perhaps that’s just not true and that is what we all want, but a largely failing industry, I find the shift toward louder, less authentic and no nuance, to be a weird way to right the ship.
This rant was likely too long and a waste of time, as none of what Kiffin said at SEC Media Days will ultimately matter or be remembered, nor will the reaction to it. I just felt compelled to highlight the stupidity in all of it while hoping that a character like Kiffin that makes college football fun, will continue to speak candidly in the face of ignorant backlash.