Lane Kiffin rips recurring transfers in college football, laments loss of camaraderie

College football has changed a ton in the last five years alone, with the introduction of a more fluid transfer portal and the adoption of NIL reform driving most of the change. Not everyone is a fan of the new structure, including Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin.

Kiffin joined The Pat McAfee Show on Tuesday. And after a riveting interview, he was asked a pretty open-ended question about how he feels about college football right now given the changes.

He was blunt. Not a fan.

“I don’t like it for college football at all,” Kiffin said. “I don’t think there’s anybody that thinks it’s a good thing that players are playing at four or five teams in college. And so I don’t like that.”

The proliferation of multiple-time transfers is certainly one of the new elements in the sport. It has created a lot of headaches for coaches, who are constantly trying to salvage relationships on the fritz to hold their roster together.

But there’s also just the element of team-building that is hurt by the constant departures. There’s less continuity in college football these days.

“I don’t like that it doesn’t have the same camaraderie in the locker room because everyone chose or grew up wanting to go to the school,” Kiffin said. “So many players now, which is fine, but they choose to go to a school because it pays them more money. They didn’t even grow up a fan of it. So I don’t like that part of it.”

Kiffin also wondered if the ease with which players can depart now leads to bad habit-forming at a young age. Are players being molded for life the right way in the current edition of college football?

“It gives kids a way, whenever things aren’t going well I just go in the portal and I leave,” Kiffin said. “There are good parts of it. For the players it’s great that they get paid. But I don’t think it’s really good for college football that there’s so much movement.”