Ole Miss head football coach Lane Kiffin this week joined 105.5 WERC’s “Alabama Morning News with JT” for a quick but memorable segment.
The interview came after Auburn fired head coach Gus Malzahn this past Sunday. A permanent replacement has yet to be named, but Kiffin’s name has popped up in the rumor mill as a potential candidate.
“Are you speaking to me from a hotel in Auburn, Alabama this morning?” host JT Nysewander jokingly asked to begin the interview.
“I am not. I am [calling in] from Jordan-Hare Stadium, actually,” Kiffin quipped back.
The former University of Alabama offensive coordinator quickly reinforced, “That’s a joke.”
Asked more seriously if he would be the next head coach on The Plains, Kiffin responded, “No, I’m going to go beat LSU [this Saturday].”
Former Crimson Tide tight end Michael Nysewander, JT’s son, is currently on Kiffin’s staff in Oxford, MS.
Kiffin during the interview also discussed the strength of Ole Miss’ current recruiting class, which is ranked in the top-20 by various national outlets after the early signing day on Wednesday. He explained how recruiting has been a unique challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The host towards the end of the segment asked Kiffin about his thoughts on whether college football players should be allowed to be payed under NCAA rules.
“Well, I think they should,” Kiffin said. “The only issue with it is — well, not the only — but the major issue is, ‘How are you going to manage recruiting?’ If you can start paying players, how do you have boosters not telling players, ‘When you get here, we’ll pay you this amount of money?’ So basically, you’ve just legalized cheating. That’s the concern with it — not that the players don’t deserve it.”
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Sean Ross is the editor of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn
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