CFB: Fake outrage over NIL persists

Ole Miss football coach Lane Kiffin, who is never afraid to speak his mind, made headlines at SEC media days two weeks ago when he lamented the current state of college football. Kiffin’s opening statement in the big room saw him take aim at NIL, and the wild west-like nature of the transfer portal. Kiffin’s main beef with NIL is what he said was a “pay-for-play thing going on”. 

While some people do long for the unpaid labor that the NCAA made billions of dollars off of for its entire existence, level-headed individuals see NIL as the right for student-athletes to make money for their work. Sounds a lot like the American dream to me.

Kiffin’s obvious point is that he works at a university that can’t keep up with the big boys financially when it comes to landing elite talent. Who can blame elite recruits for going to the programs that can produce the best offer in terms of NIL deals? Especially in a sport like football where one play can end a career. The big issue with Kiffin’s dreary outlook is that big-time recruits have always gone to the Universities that were capable of dishing out the big bucks to recruits. Kiffin knows just as well as anyone that big-time handouts for recruits were being done long before NIL was ever thought of. 

Kiffin should’ve run a coup to become Auburn’s head coach in the offseason if he was worried about the shortcomings of the NIL capabilities of Ole Miss. The last time Ole Miss landed a top ten class, Hugh Freeze was running the show and we all know how that ended. Long story short, Ole Miss was never landing elite classes without drastic measures. My advice to Lane is to embrace NIL and try to get a better collective going or bite the bullet and leave town in less than five years which is Lane’s normal plan of action.