SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA DAYS

July 23, 2026

Lane Kiffin

LSU Tigers

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Welcome to the podium LSU Head Football Coach Lane Kiffin.

LANE KIFFIN: Thank you, Commissioner. You know, I met the Commissioner 17 years ago. I was a head coach at Tennessee. I just think about, you know, you can never predict the future of your life and the directions that it goes. 17 years later, third SEC job. He was the Associate Commissioner at the time for Commissioner Slive. I just have great respect for Greg and what he's done.

Then I think about the 17 years, and I think about how far the SEC has come since then when I first got into the conference and through his leadership. You know, leadership especially in the public eye, is not easy. He has a really difficult job. I think Greg does an amazing job, amazing job of communicating even with us as head coaches.

We don't always agree on his decisions, but I also understand now, being around longer, he has 16 schools to please and fan bases and athletic directors, head coaches, and presidents to answer to.

Many times his decisions that he has to come up -- and I appreciate him for the strength that he shows -- is really he's just making a decision based off what he's told to do by the ADs and specifically by the presidents. So I appreciate Greg. I appreciate our friendship and kind of growing through a lot of things together throughout the different stops of coming back to the SEC.

Tampa is a really special place. I think it's kind of things just happen sometimes, and flying down here just kind of putting thoughts together, you know, that as the head coach of LSU, this being the first time on the podium at SEC Media Day and it being in Tampa for the first time, as Greg alluded to, this is a really special place not just for my dad, but for my family, my kids.

All four grandparents lived here in Tampa. This was a place that we came to every summer and great memories, the Glazers of the Bucs have been phenomenal to our family throughout everything, and over the last two summers of losing both parents and both having services down here in Tampa.

Really great place and a lot of great memories here and a lot of appreciation for people here over our time in Tampa.

So these seven months at LSU have been awesome. It's been amazing to come into Baton Rouge in the state of Louisiana and acceptance and how great they've been to my family. The Commissioner talked about, you know, to have a son, Knox, playing on campus and every morning they practice, and then he just can walk over from practice onto campus is really special and how the community has been to us as family, and the state.

You know, over seven months just seeing that Louisiana is built out of hardworking people that are really passionate and love football. I think that really fits in well with our staff and the values and principles that we bring into our organization, into our football program. That's been great.

There are so many things to do in Baton Rouge and then New Orleans right up the road. It's been great for our staff and for their families and been very appreciative of that.

You know, one of the things that has really stuck out to me has been the alignment at LSU from the top down, from President Rousse to Verge Ausberry, our athletic director, to our board of supervisors. That alignment has been great from the first time I met with them.

Then a lot of times people, you know, schools recruit just like coaches do. Is it that way when you get there? It's been amazing. That alignment and commitment to building a championship program has been great.

You know, one of the things at LSU in taking it was talking about the opportunities for the football players and the ability to recruit great players around the country. One of those things is branding. That's one of the reasons you come to LSU. We talk about it being just different.

This week I was meeting with our Nike rep. Think about how different it is for kids in NIL opportunities to come to LSU. You know, we have 12 football players that have NIL deals with Nike. No school in America has more than eight. So think about the difference of that as branding about come to LSU as a football player.

Jordan Seton, our left tackle, has an NIL deal with Nike. There has never been an offensive lineman ever to have one in college with Nike. That's one of the things when you talk about LSU being different and why it is a different place to come, and when you come and the association with LSU and the branding that goes with that nationally has really been amazing to see.

That really goes into the blueprint of what we're building and what I said seven months ago when I took the job. We're coming to LSU to sign the best players in the country out of high school and then mix that with the best portal players in the country and put them together.

That's led us into this roster that we have now, which is a really good mixture of that. You have some elite high school players we just signed, some of the best D-linemen in America that will be true freshmen, and then some elite portal first-round portal players coming in and that combination.

That roster is exciting to work with. I can't wait to get to the field, get back to fall camp to do that. But it also excites me about the future of LSU, too. Not just this year.

We've put together a roster that can win now, but as I look at when you build the program, where it really will go to another level is how you build your depth, and that you can't necessarily build the first year, but then you can once you sign the high school players and back-to-back classes and portal players.

Remember, guys, I think the portal is thought so much about every portal player is a senior or a one-year player. That's not the case. A lot of times you sign a portal player, they may have two, three years of eligibility left. So then you have them in your program. Now you go into year two. You've coached them already. Maybe they didn't even -- all the portal players aren't top players. You know, you build your depth through that, but they may be backups in year one, and then year two they're your starters.

That's really exciting to me that we were able to build a roster that we can win now and to see the success of the high school elite players coming last year, committing this year into this class and then the portal players that we were able to sign in such a short period of time last year and now to have a whole year leading up to that.

The future is really bright and really amazing at LSU of what's to come.

You know, when you take over a program, it's really exciting. You know, I'm really fortunate -- the Commissioner and I were talking back there. Finebaum, our historian of SEC, gave me the stat. There's never been a head coach to have three SEC jobs that were in the conference. That's really amazing to have those opportunities and be part of that, and it's so exciting for me when you take over a new job.

I've just kind of -- you follow my life. I've built my life out of pushing out of comfort. That may not be for everybody. That's fine. That's just how I am. This job has really pushed me out of comfort to take a new job, to be at LSU. Like everyone talks about, the pressure of LSU and what comes with that.

And there is more things to be done as the head coach of LSU than anywhere I have been that are asked of me. I've really enjoyed that. It's been exciting to do that and to rebuild within a program a roster and to come in and come off of a 7-6 season and then the expectations that everybody in the media has that we're supposed to be this great team right away. That's an awesome challenge.

You want to talk about getting uncomfortable. That does it. Expectations make you uncomfortable. They make you not be able to just go through motions in any aspect of your program. So that's been awesome.

I really just can't wait to get on the field with them. You know, this has been seven months. There's been a lot of stuff, and you have the high school, then you have the portal, and then you have spring ball, and you have all the things.

To just go coach with them on the field and to put these players together and start moving the pieces around and get them developed, that's always been something I think we've done really well. Also, it's been really exciting to me.

When you take the pieces of a new team, new years, and if you look at our teams over the course of time, especially offensively, they look different every year because they're based off of the pieces. We don't just run the same plays, run the same systems. That's exciting to me to come in and get those pieces from everywhere and put them together, but you got to get on the grass to do it.

And the excitement of the schedule and to coach in Tiger Stadium and have the big opener against Clemson just really every day pushes us to be the best and really is exciting to get back there.

The three players today -- that wasn't an easy choice. We have a lot of really, really good players. You know, we brought three players. We left Sam, our quarterback. This is an interesting time where actually this morning had player-led practices. So Sam was able to stay for that. Sam is doing an amazing job.

You know, these three players that we brought today I think are an interesting combination because you get a little bit of everything to me of what college football is now.

You know, TJ coming through the portal, coming from Ole Miss to LSU, having been here before with another school. You never thought that would happen years ago. To have a portal player that left a team to come to us.

Then you have Whit that had a chance to go to the NFL Draft, and a lot of people would have in his situation with a coaching change and having played really well. Whit decided to stay. He wanted to see LSU return to dominance, to return to the style of play that he grew up watching, which was the reason why he came here, and he wanted to come back to make sure he was part of that.

Then you have Trey'Dez, someone that in high school, stayed in Louisiana, went to LSU, and now playing great, and also had a chance to go into the portal, like all kids, and decided to stay with a new staff.

So I think you'll really enjoy these three. Again, that was a tough decision because there's a lot of household-name players we could have brought today.

You know, the question the Commissioner mentioned there about social media and Knox. I think as I look back over my life, one of the things that has been great is subtracting things as you get older. I think that's a big part of growth.

If you really want to keep growing, a lot of people add things as they go versus subtracting things that are issues. Whether that's diet, whether that's in my situation alcohol, whether that's things that are subtracted along the way, toxic relationships, things that as you grow you decide, okay, I'm going to continue to grow.

Knox one day was like, "Dad, there's no way you can get off social media." If you know me, that's the best thing to do. My kids have learned that too. If they really want something, just say I can't do it, and I'm going to do it. And so I'm like, "Oh, I bet I can."

And it really wasn't a plan. So I got off of all of it. Then it was still on there. I said, okay, I'm going to go to another level, and I just deleted the apps. Wasn't a long-term plan. It was really interesting to see as I went through it because Knox pushing me to do that, challenging me, allowed me to help other players, friends, coaches to say, man, you should try this sometime because once you remove something from your life, you start to realize how many other people are addicted to it or need it.

It is interesting now. I did a 5:00 a.m. workout at Camp Tampa. And I watched, as soon as the workout is over this morning, what did everybody do? They rush to get their phones because they have to get on there. To be free of that has been interesting because you don't compare.

Kevin Elko, who actually here in Tampa did my dad's funeral, and Kevin used to say to us years ago at Alabama: Comparisons are the thief of joy. What I realized and what I talk to people about now is, like, if you're not on anything, you don't see anything all day, you don't compare.

Because now social media does what? You sit there all day long, and you start to compare your job. You start to compare the city you live in. You start to compare your vacation, your kids, your clothes, your car, your significant other. When you don't see that all day, you're free of that comparison.

It's been an interesting study. I've always, you know, made our kids, our players, not have their phones in certain times, you know, like team meetings and stuff, just to get them off of them so they can learn to communicate.

It's just been interesting and a way of being more present. So I appreciate Knox challenging me on that. It's been great.

The other question I get is the nine-game schedule. Like I said, I don't always agree with the Commissioner, but he has hard decisions to make, and we understand that.

My concern was about the nine games is that you're going to lose nonconference games. Teams will eventually get out of the bigger nonconference games because the selection process is not fixed. Until that is fixed to really truly reward strength of schedule, I was against it because I think what you're going to have is more conference losses. You don't prove anything.

If I would keep playing -- we're all in the same conference. We keep playing each other. We don't really prove that we're better than anyone else, and we're taking away out-of-conference games. I just think that it's going to cause issues that we've already seen.

Until we can get into a world where people can actually look at teams and say that team that is 9-3 with their schedule is a better team than that 11-1 in a different conference, which now I think we aren't even close to doing that, I think it causes a problem because we don't have enough nonconference in our sport.

I look at other sports, like baseball. Oklahoma just wins a national championship in baseball. Well, I think they're 14-16 in SEC play. Think about that. In football we would be nowhere near the playoffs, you know, 11th in the regular season, and then win the national championship, but they also have nonconference games do show how good they are. So I just think that system wasn't ready for that change yet until they change the selection part.

Last part, I just want to say thank you to the media. You know, everybody talks, these coaches get up here, and I see the things on TV. I watched the other day. They talk about their summer and everything they did and all those things, and you guys giving up your time here and your summer to be here to cover us.

Specifically to the SEC media, it's part of what makes the SEC so special because of the intensity of the media and the coverage and the passion that everyone talks about the fans have. Well, the media has it, too. So I appreciate you guys.

With that, I'll open it to questions.

Q. Lane, I asked you a few years ago what your NIL budget was at Ole Miss, and you didn't say, but you said, God, I'd like to tell you. I was going to give you a second chance today and ask you what your NIL budget at LSU is? Do you think we're every going to see the day where every team's payroll and every team's salary is published?

LANE KIFFIN: Yeah, I don't know that we're going to see that day. I think that, again, this is a really hard thing to get to, but to do it right, just like the scheduling would need to be fixed and would be to have a real salary cap.

I know what looked like it was going to be implemented, you know, coming with the revenue sharing. I think I've always been the coach to just tell you how it is. That's not being followed because it's not a real cap. It's not a hard cap.

So that would be like in the NFL, like, hey, we have this cap, but it's not a hard cap, and you can go above it. So it's just really a poor system.

And, like you said, things aren't public. You know, the contracts aren't public. So different than the NFL where in the NFL everybody has the contracts of all the players and the other teams and everything. Then you have long-term contracts.

I think one of the things, too, as I talk about this system, I believe you build a system based off of where you are. We talked about you build your offensive system off your players. If you build your system off how many portal players, high school players, in my opinion it's not, hey, here is the cookie-cutter formula wherever you are. You go at LSU; you do it different than you did at Ole Miss.

So as you build it, though, you know, you can't say, in my opinion -- some people will say, okay, the traditional powers should just build through high school. Well, study the NFL, and they say, okay, well, yes, the best teams over time, you will sustain the longest by building through the draft and supplement through free agency because that's where the long-term contracts are at the lower prices than the free agency. But our system doesn't have that.

Now, if you could fix it where the high school kids, my opinion, they should be lower, just like I was in the NFL when we drafted JaMarcus Russell before they moved down the rookie salary cap and then they made the slots for the draft because the veterans -- the rookies were getting paid more than the ten-year vets. Well, they got that fixed.

That in our system is a little bit screwed up, in my opinion. The kids that haven't played at all coming out of high school should be making less, and there should be a freshman, like a rookie cap, of how they are, and then the max slots per position that they make. And then they're signed to multi-year contracts. So now you really do get into, okay, you build through high school because that guy can stay longer.

Think if you built through high school and that's all you did, and I think a couple of schools have done that and it's not working out well because you don't have the -- they can leave after year one when they don't play as much as they like or they want more money or they do play and then they want more money.

So that's why we built so much through the portal and will continue to build a lot through the portal, because of the way the system is, even though we can sign great elite top-100 high school players, like we just did, like what's committing to us. We're still going to build a lot through the portal until they balance out the system and they balance out how contracts work.

Q. When you were at Ole Miss, you led them to the third most wins in the conference since '22. You had ten players drafted or signed as free agents in the '25 draft, eight players drafted or signed as free agents in the '26 class. You had a top-4 portal class each of the last three portal cycles you were there. Jaxson Dart, first round pick. Yet, in a "Vanity Fair" article, you said Oxford diversity hurt you in talent acquisition. Is it your belief that if there was a little bit more diversity, all those numbers I cited could have been even better?

LANE KIFFIN: I had a feeling that was going somewhere. You were doing really positive stuff the whole way through. I was like, man, this guy is good. Sounds like you should work for Jimmy Sexton, man. You were going a good direction there.

I made a challenging decision in change. I think as I look back to that, I thought I could find a way for everybody to understand. Now as I look back later on, that was never going to happen.

I made a decision that I changed jobs, and as I get older and I go through things and losing both parents -- I was actually talking to Ross Dellinger, and I kind of said something that might sound kind of funny to you, but, you know, I watched the Hulk Hogan special. I realized something. I was, like: We're all going to die. And so some of the things that we put importance on, we worry about, and what this person says and that, really aren't going to matter.

When I lost my dad I started thinking that. I really started thinking, when I grew up there were two people that I thought just wouldn't die... my dad and Hulk Hogan. Then I watched that special, and Hulk Hogan died too. Like, there was no way that Hulk Hogan was ever going to not wrestle and die, and he did.

It just made me reflect on I can't be so concerned about little things and what people say and this. You got to make decisions; you got to go with them. You do things, and you make really good decisions, and you make poor decisions. That was a poor usage of a term that I believe, just like many coaches that have been there before, was factual, but over the course of a long interview, was bad timing and bad usage of the word.

It is what it is. I apologized when I said it, and moving on.

Q. After a two-year hiatus, Auburn and LSU play again this year. Talk about what that game means to you. There seems to be a nice little rivalry with Auburn and some of the things in the past. How is Malik Blocton progressing for you?

LANE KIFFIN: Yeah, Malik is doing great. Really working hard. Made a lot of plays in spring ball. I think Auburn is a great program. I think they got new energy with the coaching staff and a really good offensive system coming in and keeping DJ Durkin on defense.

I think that they're going to be a really improved program, and that's a really hard place to play always and really gives people a lot of problems. Kind of a magical stadium that magical things happen in. That's one of many extremely competitive games we have, including really for the first time that you have five road conference games.

Q. I think at some point after your social media cleanse, Congress introduced a bill that has a thing in it called the Lane Kiffin Rule. It's about coach movement. I think with that and with a lot of the things that have been said about your move, I'm just wondering, do you think you get a bad rap about, you know -- they look at you sometimes and say, that's the problem with everything? Do you think you get a bad rap?

LANE KIFFIN: Well, the good thing is I don't know if I do because I don't read anything. So it really is a different way of not seeing. Like you just said that, and I didn't know that until you said it.

You know, I guess in that I hope that some way for future coaches they're not put in that situation. You know, the NFL, you're never put in that situation because of the calendar and because of the rules of movement within seasons.

I do hope for future people that's fixed so that you're not in that same predicament for players, for coaches, which really was a player issue too. Then we fixed that with moving the portal date back. That was more of an issue earlier in the postseason, too, as you saw players having to leave teams to get into the portal during the season. Hopefully some way they fix it for coaches, too.