Lane Kiffin is no stranger to stirring controversy.
The former Ole Miss head coach drew attention again this week after floating a theory about diversity efforts that he claimed at times hindered his ability to recruit players during his tenure at Oxford.
In excerpts taken from a wide-ranging interview with Vanity Fair, Kiffin noted that some recruits would tell him, “‘Hey, coach, we really like you. But my grandparents aren’t letting me move to Oxford, Mississippi.’
“That doesn’t come up when you say Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Parents were sitting here this weekend saying the campus’ diversity feels so great: ‘It feels like there’s no segregation. And we want that for our kid because that’s the real world.’”
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Kiffin said he does not expect to face similar challenges in his new home, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, saying, “That doesn’t come up when you say Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Parents were sitting here this weekend saying the campus’ diversity feels so great: ‘It feels like there’s no segregation. And we want that for our kid because that’s the real world.’”
Kiffin did not directly point to inherent challenges to diversity at Ole Miss, nor did he frame the school as uniquely racist in the article. He did, however, suggest he believes its history still shapes national perception.
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Former ESPN host Sage Steele was a guest on the “Will Cain Country” podcast, hosted by Fox News Channel’s “The Will Cain Show” host Will Cain, on Tuesday and weighed in on the LSU coach’s comments. Cain admitted he had never traveled to Oxford, while Steele spoke about her ties to the campus.
“I have not seen the Confederate flags there, it that doesn’t mean that it’s not there. But I have not seen it. My daughter is a sophomore at Ole Miss.”
Steele questioned the timing of Kiffin’s remarks, suggesting he raised concerns only after leaving Ole Miss.
“I just think it’s really fascinating that now he says that,” she said. But, you were fine in Oxford all those years. You were fine in Oxford leading into last football season, saying ‘It is just so much more than football.’ …. it’s how the community has embraced him and his family. And he’s come such a long way personally. …And then all of a sudden, they hold your feet to the fire, and no, you can’t coach the college football playoff after deciding to leave.”
Confederate flags were once a common sight at Mississippi football games until the university effectively phased them out in 1997 by banning flagpoles.
Until 2003, the school’s mascot, Colonel Reb, reflected its Civil War-era past. The program still uses the “Rebels” nickname and the “Ole Miss” moniker, both tied to the state’s slavery-era history.
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Kiffin later clarified his comments saying, “I just hope [my comment] comes across respectful to Ole Miss. … There are some things that I’m saying that are factual, they’re not shots.” he told On3.
“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 to 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.”
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