As the dust settles on Lane Kiffin’s move from Ole Miss to LSU, the college football calendar is still part of the discussion. Kiffin left the Rebels following the Egg Bowl, but they are still in position to host a first-round game in the College Football Playoff this month.
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey pointed out Kiffin isn’t the first coach to leave one SEC school for another. Dan Mullen went from Mississippi State to Florida and Tommy Tuberville went from Ole Miss to Auburn, as Sankey noted. But he also pointed out the difference in the calendar from past moves.
Speaking with Paul Finebaum on SEC Network, Sankey acknowledged the amount of interest in Kiffin’s move to LSU as all eyes turned to his decision. But with National Signing Day now in December, Sankey noted the need for programs to speed up coaching searches. That’s one of the ways the calendar impacts those situations.
“Let’s look at the parts,” Sankey said on The Paul Finebaum Show. “This is not the first time we’ve had a coach move from one SEC member to another. It’s Lane. That kind of lingered for a long time, so it became big news consistently. But it’s happened. … This one, though, because of the season that Ole Miss had, was obviously drawing more interest and a lot of questions. So let’s start with, why is the timing the way it is? Remember when Nick [Saban] was hired at Alabama years ago, that was not until the Monday of the national championship game. So it hasn’t always been this way.
“What are the big factors? One of the big factors is we moved up Signing Day into December. So you have to have a coach in place, right? Well, let’s change the signing date. That would be the one big step to say, let’s just go back to February and take some of that pressure off. And then, how can we move the transfer portal? Those are things that we control. And we ought to control those.”
Kiffin’s decision came just three days before the Early Signing Period began, leaving Ole Miss after an 11-1 record in the regular season – the Rebels’ first such season. His departure created plenty of discussion about the calendar and why it took place with his team in the race for a national championship.
During his introductory press conference, Lane Kiffin also called for an NFL-like calendar down the road. In the meantime, he said there weren’t many different ways to go about the last week.
“Obviously, the last 48 hours, in a lot of ways, sucked,” Kiffin said. “The only way I can describe it, (is that) it sucked for a lot of people. There was no way to possibly do it, in my opinion, any better than we did (from a) timing standpoint, because it’s a bad scheduling system of how it’s set up. Eventually, hopefully it gets like the NFL where can’t do that in the season and don’t have to make those decisions.”