Lane Kiffin shares how Ole Miss educates players on sports gambling
In the evolving world of college athletics in 2024 there are pitfalls everywhere. NIL has proliferated, leaving college athletes with more money… and potentially more blind spots to things like sports gambling.
One of the sticky issues these days is, in fact, mobile sports betting, which has become fairly ubiquitous as state after state legalizes it.
For Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin, it’s one more complicating factor among dozens. One that he doesn’t necessarily have a great pulse on himself. So Kiffin has turned to the experts to speak to his squad about the pitfalls of mobile sports betting.
“I don’t have a ton of knowledge in that area, so when I don’t we bring people in for that,” Kiffin said. “We had someone speak to our coaches I want to say at Destin, the SEC coaches about this a year ago. I thought that they did a great job. They had worked with the NFL. They had worked with other colleges and they were people that knew how it worked.
“They were able to get the alerts and track where the players, where the bets come from and their phones or girlfriends’ phones. And they did such a good job that we brought them in here before the season to talk to our guys about that.”
Over the past year there have been a handful of scandals involving sports gambling at the college level.
Dozens of athletes were suspended at both Iowa and Iowa State over alleged sports betting. Alabama baseball coach Brad Bohannon was fired after links to him popped up in another sports betting investigation.
If you’re not careful, you could potentially cost yourself your college career over sports gambling. And it’s not hard to slip up and do something that’s currently prohibited by either the NCAA or local governance.
“It’s just another one of those things out there that guys got to understand and protect the team, protect themselves and protect the team,” Kiffin said.
Lane Kiffin getting NFL vibe from team
Ole Miss did a lot of work in the transfer portal this offseason, bringing in several talented veterans who are expected to make an immediate impact this fall.
They’ve already been having one in the few short months they’ve been on campus. Kiffin has detected a distinct NFL vibe from his group.
“It is a very NFL vibe because we always have so many new players, but this I think more than ever are players that have played a lot, especially in this conference,” Kiffin said. “So it kind of feels more like, ‘OK here’s free agency. Here’s all these pieces have experience and played — some in similar systems as ours.’ Then piecing it all together.
“Right or wrong, I’ve erred on the side of we’re gonna do a lot of mental work and a lot of practicing, but we’re not gonna do a lot of tackling and physical work just for the wear and tear of offseason and the season and potentially a lot of games. I’m not saying we’re gonna play a lot of games, but potentially the new format has a lot of games.”
Ole Miss, of course, will feel it has the talent to earn a playoff spot after winning 11 games in 2023.