Lane Kiffin describes how difficult it is to recruit, maintain current roster
With portal season upon us, every coaches plate now has a little more on it. That includes Ole Miss’ Lane Kiffin as he does what he can to focus on the present yet, also, the future in Oxford.
Kiffin spoke about the challenges of the transfer portal, including where it falls on the timeline each year, during a press conference for the Peach Bowl earlier this week. He noted the difficulty of the dynamics of it considering that he’s trying to evalute players that his program could add while also attempting to keep his current roster intact.
“I think, like Coach (Franklin) mentioned, it’s a big challenge trying to manage all of that at the same time,” said Kiffin. “There has always been recruiting in bowl games. But, now, the portal doesn’t just mean the guys you see going in the portal. It means your own guys and managing that.”
“You’re basically managing your current roster and you’re trying to manage your projected roster for next year at the same time,” Kiffin explained.
Under Kiffin, Ole Miss has become as active as any team in the portal. In 2022, the Rebels had 43 interactions within the portal with 18 players coming in and 25 headed out. They then had even more in 2023 with 50 more portal changes. That brought 24 new faces to their team while it also led 26 to find new homes.
Now, in 2024, five players have already elected to leave The ‘Sip through the portal so far.
The transfer portal has been a successful tool for Kiffin and the Rebels. Still, that doesn’t make it any less of a issue to have to deal with, especially with where it falls during the year.
“There are a lot of challenges to it. That’s the world we live in now,” said Kiffin. “That calendar? That’s not very ideal or set up very well but we have to maximize the situation that the calendar puts us in.”
Kiffin not expecting many opt-outs against Penn State
There is always some chance that players opt-out of bowl games, even major bowls like the Peach Bowl. Still, Lane Kiffin isn’t too worried about that when it comes to his team this postseason.
Kiffin explained that he isn’t aware of any opt-outs at this point. He also said he doesn’t expect many to come because there aren’t many projected high draft picks on the roster.
“I have not heard of any,” Kiffin said. “I would expect that we don’t have any. We’re kind of not in one of those years where we really have some first-rounders that are coming out that are concerned of injuries and so forth. So I would not anticipate that happening with us.”
“I kind of mentioned before. I don’t think that — no disrespect to our guys. Just from grades coming back and in conversations with our players in general? I don’t think that we have guys really in that conversation, of that first-round type of grade or projection to potentially opt out. I don’t think that will be an issue for us this year.”