Kiffin, Ole Miss will continue to lead from the front in an NIL system they know is broken
Lane Kiffin this week used the Rebel Road Trip’s stop in Memphis as his latest forum to bemoan the current state of college athletics.
Kiffin has mostly relied on the NCAA Transfer Portal in transforming Ole Miss into a contender over his four-plus seasons as Rebel football head coach.
The result? An all-in championship push for the Rebels in 2024. Ole Miss is ranked as a consensus Top 10 team by each of On3’s national experts.
“The NIL/portal system is a broken system. It’s terrible,” Kiffin said, in a clip captured and distributed by Mike Ceide of WREG TV in Memphis. “And that’s coming from the person at the school that probably benefits more than anyone in America from it. That’s how poor it is (as far as) organization and two different windows and guys can go to as many schools as they want. That’s not what college football should be like or college sports.
“There’s a lot of problems in the system. Whatever the rules they make, we just try to maximize them.”
Maximize them the Rebels have.
Ole Miss brought back the core of its first-ever 11-win team from last season. Among them is third-year starting quarterback Jaxson Dart, one of five Top 100 players in college football for 2024, according to On3..
Tre Harris, the highest-graded returning wide receiver against single coverage in the SEC, is another. The rest are transfers: Walter Nolen (defensive tackle, Texas A&M), Princely Umanmielen (EDGE, Florida) and Antwane ‘Juice’ Wells (wide receiver, South Carolina). Ole Miss signed On3’s No. 3 overall portal class.
Kiffin and Co. will continue to roster-tweak between now and season-opening kickoff with Furman on August 31.
“Lane Kiffin has taken this program to an occasional contender, but mostly pretender, to a legitimate, upper-elite/echelon SEC team,” SEC Network’s Paul Finebaum previously said of Kiffin and the Rebels.
“He’s made difference where he can (and) he has a great collective. It’s hard to find anybody more effective right now in the portal than Lane.”
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Ole Miss has committed three transfers in just the last two weeks.
First was Georgia State running back Domonique Thomas, followed by Jacksonville State EDGE Chris Hardie and wide receivers Izaiah Hartrup (Southern Illinois) and Jordan Smart (North Texas).
New Mexico running back Jacory Merritt flipped from Arizona to Ole Miss in April. However, he didn’t make his grades, so he’s back with the Wildcats. Cornerback Amorion Walker was a mid-year enrollee and went through spring practices. He returned to Michigan.
Ole Miss reeled in Houston transfer corner Isaiah Hamilton May 3. The Rebels have been annually ranked inside the Top 10 of Top 25 polls in each of the last three years. They also played in a pair of New Year’s Six bowls.
“It makes it a lot easier when a lot of you guys came back that could have left for the NFL,” Kiffin said, during a sit-down with Jared Ivey, one of the veteran returners for his Ole Miss defense. “We’re very fortunate this year to have a lot of the core guys back that are, really, high-culture guys.
“Your group of guys, it makes it so much easier. I felt like two years ago for that Sugar Bowl we had to kind of re-do everything because a lot of those guys were gone.”
Ole Miss is Kiffin’s longest-tenured coaching stop across both college and the NFL. He steered Ivey and the Rebels to a program-record 11 games last season.
“I think it’s super cool that a lot of us are coming back,” Ivey said. “I know we all came back with one thing on our mind: (National championship) or bust.”
“It’s going to be an awesome run,” Kiffin said.
The post Kiffin, Ole Miss will continue to lead from the front in an NIL system they know is broken appeared first on On3.
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