Everything Lane Kiffin Said at SEC Media Days After 16-Minute Opening Statement

LSU Tigers head coach Lane Kiffin was the first coach to take the podium during the final day of SEC Media Days in Tampa on Thursday.

He answered just four questions from reporters after a 16-minute long opening statement. It appears that Kiffin was trying to filibuster his way off the podium, but LSU fans will certainly hear more of what he has to say leading into the start of the 2026 season.

Courtesy of the SEC's official website, here is what Kiffin had to say after completing his painfully-long opening statement:

On What LSU's NIL Payroll is and If There Will Ever Be a Time Team's Will Release That Info Publicly

LSU Tigers head coach Lane Kiffin speaks to the press during SEC Football Kickoff Media Day at the Tampa Marriott. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

"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.

On the diversity comments he made in the Vanity Fair interview:

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.

On the LSU-Auburn Matchup and New DL Malik Blocton:

"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."

On The Lane Kiffin Rule:

"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."

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