The Rebels coach is “excited” about adding Oklahoma and Texas, but said “it’s harder to win” with the Sooners and Longhorns in the SEC.
DALLAS — Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin has a unique problem — and a good one.
He has a wealth of returning experience on his Ole Miss football team to go with a wealth of arrivals from the transfer portal.
How does Kiffin plan to integrate them all seamlessly so the Rebels can replicate last year’s historic season?
“I do think there’s a good mixture,” Kiffin said Monday at SEC Media Days at the Omni Hotel. “We have so many good portal players, but we have so many players coming back, which we didn’t have two seasons ago, that know our expectations, know how we want things done and know what our culture is. So that certainly helps.”
Like he always does, Kiffin cleaned up in the portal, adding some 24 newcomers, including former 5-star defensive tackle Walter Nolen, linebacker Chris Paul, Jr., edge rusher Princely Umanmielen, cornerback Trey Amos and safety Yam Banks.
We’ve done what’s considered well out there in the portal for a number of years now,” Kiffin said.
But the Rebels also bring back 16 returning starters — second-most in the SEC — from last season’s 11-2 campaign. It was the most wins in the program’s 118-year history.
Kiffin has almost an embarrassment of riches as Ole Miss heads into the 2024 season, including starting quarterback Jaxson Dart, who passed for 3,364 yards and 23 touchdowns last year.
In reality, there should be no problem fitting all the pieces together. Having such a firm foundation already in place will only help bring the portal additions along even faster.
But he referenced free agency in both the NFL and the NBA as examples where just bringing in talented players “doesn’t always work” to produce wins.
“It’s not all about the Xs and Os,” Kiffin said. “They gotta come together. You get all these free agents and they don’t gel and they don’t play well together. This is the ultimate team sport.
The answer isn’t just be the best portal classes,” he said. “There’s a lot to that, with the makeup of the guys you signed.”
Kiffin, whose father Monte, a long-time legendary NFL assistant coach, died recently, also said he had a good conversation with former Alabama coach Nick Saban and referenced one of Saban’s favorite lines to describe the hype around the Rebels this preseason.
“This is a rat-poison situation here, to have all this attention on our players and it means nothing,” Kiffin said. “Because it’s all about the work they do here this summer.”
“I don’t know that you completely contain it. You just continue to talk about it. You continue to hit on it and you hope it sticks.”
Kiffin also applauded commissioner Greg Sankey for “how he continues to push our conference to the elite of college football” with the addition of Oklahoma and Texas to the SEC this season.
“That’ s just really exciting,” Kiffin said. “You talk about two of the top programs in college football. You’re talking about places that are really hard to play. … That’s really exciting for the conference and kind of elevates the (idea of) super conference.”