There was nothing that Lane Kiffin could’ve said on Thursday at SEC Media Days that was going to change anyone’s mind about him. The first time ever coach of three different conference schools has a track record that isn’t changing anytime soon. After last season’s exit from Oxford, any amount of grace he had left with most people was gone.
So someone explain to me why we should be upset that he didn’t kick the hornets nest all over again on Thursday in Tampa.
People love to see a trainwreck in real time. People love to consume content that makes them mad. It’s super weird, but it’s super real. We sat in the main conference room on Thursday, and I think a majority of us truly didn’t know if we were about to see more fireworks or another trainwreck between Kiffin and the media. Most of us crossed our fingers that we wouldn’t see that, but in this day and age you never know. Combine that with the current climate of angry bitterness from Ole Miss fans and you can never be too certain that the match won’t get close to the powderkeg.
Kiffin said a lot while saying almost nothing. The 18 minutes he opened with were far more similar to a filibuster than a press conference. He spoke over 2700 words in total which made SEC Media Days chuckle thinking of the days when Mike Leach uttered six words to start. Kiffin only answered four questions. One of those was about the LSU-Auburn game and a backup defensive lineman that transferred between the schools. It became obvious pretty quickly that we weren’t getting anything significant out of that time at the podium.
Good. That’s what we should all want. It’s time to move on. Ole Miss head coach Pete Golding echoed that sentiment the previous day when he took his turn at the podium.
Leaving SEC Media Days is usually the turning of the page from the offseason to the preseason. Hopefully this year’s return flights from Tampa signified the turning of a page from one of the most exhausting storylines we’ve seen in awhile. Now, we can hopefully talk about football.
