Lane Kiffin said recruiting at Ole Miss came with a message he heard again and again from families who were uneasy about moving to Oxford, Mississippi, a comment that surfaced Monday just days after he left the Rebels to become LSU's next head coach.
Kiffin said some parents told him their grandparents would not let them move to Oxford, but that reaction never came up when he mentioned Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He said one family told him, “Hey, coach, we really like you. But my grandparents aren’t letting me move to Oxford, Mississippi.”
The coach said the concern was tied to race and the feel of the campus, adding that parents told him the diversity there felt so strong that “it feels like there’s no segregation. And we want that for our kid because that’s the real world.” LSU and Ole Miss are scheduled to meet on Sept. 19 to open SEC play, 110 days after the remarks.
Kiffin made the comments in an interview with Vanity Fair, where he discussed the recruiting challenges he faced in Oxford. They came after a stretch in which he had been known for taking public shots on social media at opposing schools, even as he was trying to secure a rare exit from Ole Miss that would let him coach the Rebels in the College Football Playoff during his final days there. The remarks also landed only a few weeks after Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss had his own interview with Variety.
Kiffin said he hoped the comments were taken respectfully by Ole Miss and insisted the point was factual, not personal. “I just hope (comments) comes across respectful to Ole Miss... There are some things that I'm saying that are factual, they're not shots,” he said. The coach is now heading into a new chapter at LSU, with the first matchup against his former team already on the calendar.
