Ole Miss Coach Lane Kiffin to Oklahoma, Texas: SEC is 'A Whole Other Animal'

Leave it to Lane Kiffin to speak plainly.

The Ole Miss coach took a question Monday at SEC Media Days about Oklahoma and Texas’ coming move to the Southeastern Conference and UCLA and USC’s future transition to the Big Ten, and if those schools knew what they were getting into.

Kiffin explained at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta that the Sooners and Longhorns might not be ready for membership in college football’s best league.

“They’ve been playing in great conferences and against great opponents,” Kiffin began. “I mean, I’ll just say how it is: I don’t know if there’s a huge jump (from the Pac-12) into the Big Ten. I think going to the SEC is a whole other animal. I think the draft picks and national championships prove that coming out of the SEC.”

The Bruins and Trojans were invited this summer to join the Big Ten in 2024. The Sooners and Longhorns announced last year they’ll move east in 2025.

Kiffin, who was previously a head coach at Tennessee and USC before he eventually landed in Oxford, expressed why OU and Texas will have a greater transition than UCLA and USC.

“I’ve said, it’s just a different world,” Kiffin said. “We’ve said it for a long time: the SEC just means more, and it does. It’s just different. It’s ahead of the game. And now, the last 5-10 years, players have started coming that didn’t used to come from the Northeast and the West Coast that didn’t come at all.

“That transition, I feel like, started with Alabama, and now they’re coming to the SEC. That’s a big challenge. I know everything’s about money nowadays. Or else we wouldn’t be playing all over the place and breaking up these awesome traditions. So coaches gotta deal with it and get ready for a different world.

“The SEC,” he continued, “is the top of everything. People are always trying to chase the SEC and figure it out. I don’t know the history behind the moves, but I’m sure it had something to do with the SEC starting the unique moves for that to happen, for traditional teams like USC and UCLA to move like that.

“For those (traditions) to be dismantled for money is kind of a shame.”