Lane Kiffin expands on salary cap idea for college football

Lane Kiffin has some bold ideas for the future of college football, and one of them is a salary cap that could be enforced as it pertains to acquiring athletes.

Of course, NIL and the transfer portal have created a myriad of differences in viewpoints of how the sport should continue. In an appearance on First Take on ESPN on Wednesday, the Ole Miss leader expanded on his salary cap comment.

“I don’t have the perfect plan for it,” said Kiffin. “Just in answering the question, there should be some sort of cap. Because if you look at professional sports – which now we are in a professional sport – we have free agency for the players, they get paid to play without having long-term contracts.”

Continuing, Kiffin believes the benefits outweigh the negatives in this particular situation.

“My point of capping it was, at least then there would be a way to manage it,” explained Kiffin. “Remember, too, not only is there not a cap, we have collective groups – donors – at places paying players and picking the players to come, supposedly without communication with the coaches. How would that system work in professional sports like the NFL? Everybody has a different cap, and the coaches and the general managers aren’t picking and choosing how they divide that cap for the players. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.

“From the beginning of this, if you understood and you looked at it, you could see these problems coming. I said it, you’ve basically legalized cheating. I said that I think the first week this came out. We are where we are.”

Time will tell what changes the sport of college football sees in the near future, but Lane Kiffin has some bold ideas he’s not afraid to share with the world.

Lane Kiffin on conference realignment: ‘It just doesn’t seem right’

Continuing, Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin has remained outspoken on the issues of NIL and conference realignment throughout the offseason as he compares the model to a professional league with no rules.

With the recent addition of USC and UCLA to the Big Ten and last summers move by Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC, something feels off for the coach who has spent time from coast to coast.

During an appearance on ESPN’s First Take, Lane Kiffin addressed the current state of conference realignment and how it has impacted college football as a whole.

“It is a mess,” said Kiffin. “A lot of these decisions, obviously, are made for money. I just don’t – I got asked a lot last week at the league meetings about especially USC, UCLA moving and Texas, Oklahoma. It just doesn’t seem right. I said, “Texas, Oklahoma, that doesn’t feel right and USC, UCLA going to the Big Ten doesn’t feel right or sound right. Nothing about it. Especially when you look at scheduling – how that would work out – the travel and [time] away from classes.

“I’m sure, maybe something went into it more than money. But I don’t know what could’ve possibly – besides money – went into that decision and tearing those conferences apart like they are now.”

As money dominates the headlines as the primary reason for the Big Ten and SEC race to add more valuable schools, it leaves a trail of conferences behind which used to be known as the Power Five.