By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
Four questions.
Four questions was all LSU football coach Lane Kiffin took during his primary press conference at his first Southeastern Conference Media Days as the Tigers’ coach at the Tampa Marriott Water Street main ballroom on Thursday morning.
Four questions.
This was because Kiffin skillfully staged a rambling filibuster of 2,807 words for more than 15 minutes, thus limiting the remaining 10 minutes of his appearance for questions. Click the white arrow in the red box below to watch and listen the entire press conference.
It was the No. 1 wordy opener in SEC Media Days history, according to On3com’s Brett McMurphy.
SEC Football Media Days Records
— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) July 23, 2026
Fewest/most number of words in coach's opening statements:
In 2022, Mike Leach: 5 words
In 2026, Lane Kiffin: 2,807 words
Former Louisiana governor (1928-32) and major LSU fan Huey Long would have been so proud as he became infamous for lengthy filibusters as a U.S. Senator from 1932-35. Filibusters are designed by opponents to a bill to delay the vote.
Lane Kiffin has been on stage for more than 15 minutes, and finally goes to ?s.
— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) July 23, 2026
Kiffin started with a lengthy ode to SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, then discussed his son Knox – the starting quarterback at University High. He went on to talk about his late father, Monte Kiffin, a former NFL great assistant coach who was a defensive coordinator for the Tampa Bay Bucs. Kiffin spoke of spending a lot of time in Tampa. He eventually got to being at LSU.
“The seven months at LSU have been awesome,” he said. “Louisiana has real hard-working people who are really passionate and who love football. That’s been great. There are so many things to do in Baton Rouge, and New Orleans is right down the road.”
He praised LSU’s alignment with president Wade Rousse and athletic director Verge Ausberry. He mentioned that 12 LSU athletes have Nike deals – four more than the next school. One of those is Jordan Seaton – the No. 1 offensive tackle in the portal and No. 3 overall portal player whom Kiffin signed last January from Colorado.
“There’s never been a college offensive lineman ever have a deal with Nike,” Kiffin said.
“I can’t wait to get to practices,” he said.
Practice will begin for the 2026 season next month. LSU opens against Clemson on Sept. 5 at Tiger Stadium (6:30 p.m., ABC).
“I really just can’t wait to get on the field,” he said.
“There’s always going to be history. It’s the Ex right? Like, there’s always going to be the history. Do you have an Ex?”
— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) July 22, 2026
-Ole Miss coach Pete Golding on the Lane Kiffin breakup.https://t.co/2Fh7vdSiv2
Finally, Kiffin opened it up for questions. But his wordiness was far from done.
-The first was what LSU spent on the Tigers’ roster for 2026 via Name, Image & Likeness, collectives and revenue share.
He didn’t answer that specifically but discussed in and around the subject for several minutes. Here is that answer in full:
“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.”
-The second question brought up the controversial Vanity Fair article last May 11 in which he said some prospects he recruited from out of state while at Ole Miss from 2020-25 didn’t come because of the the state of Mississippi’s racial past, which is what he was told. He was asked how much better he could have recruited without that past, considering how well he recruited with it.
Vanity Fair’s Chris Smith wrote in the article, “When he was coaching (at Ole Miss), Kiffin says, top recruits would tell him, ‘Hey, coach, we really like you. But my grandparents aren’t letting me move to Oxford, Mississippi.'” Then Kiffin is quoted in the article 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.’”
Shortly after the article published, Kiffin said, “I really apologize if anybody at Ole Miss or in Mississippi was offended by that,” to On3.com.
After a rambling dissertation Thursday, Kiffin admitted his mistake above.
“You do things and you make really good decisions, and you make poor decisions,” Kiffin said. “And that was a poor usage of a term that I believe, just like many coaches, that was factual. But over the course of a long interview was bad timing and bad usage of the word. So, it is what it is. I apologized when I said it. And moving on.”
Here is Kiffin’s full answer, and this is classic. Somehow, he brought up Jimmy Sexton, Ross Dellenger and Hulk Hogan in a few sentences and delivered a newsflash, “We’re all going to die.” Amazing stuff.
“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.”
Question number three was about the Auburn-LSU rivalry with LSU playing Auburn for the first time since 2023 this season after decades of annual games. Not a well-timed question considering Kiffin has been the most talked about coach in America since he left Ole Miss. But he did turn down the Auburn job after the 2022 season before Auburn hired Hugh Freeze. Here is that answer:
“I think Auburn is a great program. I think they’ve 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.”
And the finale asked if Kiffin felt he got a bad rap for his move from Ole Miss to LSU just after the regular season with the Rebels in the College Football Playoff.
“Well, the good thing is I don’t know if I do, because I don’t read anything,” Kiffin said.
Here is the complete rest of that answer:
“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.”
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