Lane Kiffin has no regrets about talking smack to Oklahoma player

Lane Kiffin isn’t apologizing for being Lane Kiffin.

During Saturday’s 34-26 Ole Miss win over Oklahoma, the Rebels’ head coach was caught on ESPN’s broadcast getting into it with Sooners defensive lineman David Stone after the final whistle. As Kiffin prepared for his postgame interview with Molly McGrath, he made sure to remind Stone that things had gotten awfully quiet on the Oklahoma sideline.

“You’re a little quieter now than before,” Kiffin said, loud enough for the broadcast to pick up.

McGrath caught on to what was happening and asked if he was talking trash to Oklahoma’s players.

“This guy yelled at me, like, during the game, like, five times how great they were, and we can’t score on ’em,” Kiffin explained as he casually dapped up Stone.

The moment quickly made the rounds on social media, because of course it did when Lane Kiffin is involved. And predictably, some people took issue with a head coach engaging in that kind of back-and-forth with a player on the other sideline. But Kiffin doubled down on the interaction, both in his postgame press conference and again during Monday’s appearance on The Pat McAfee Show.

According to On3, Kiffin said the banter with Stone had been going on all game, with the Oklahoma defensive lineman repeatedly telling him “You ain’t going to score all day” from the sideline. Kiffin claims he did his best to ignore it during the game, but when Stone happened to walk by after Ole Miss sealed the win, he couldn’t resist getting the last word.

“I really wasn’t trying to do it on camera,” Kiffin told McAfee. “I didn’t go try to find him. He was just walking by. That’s just kind of me.”

Fair enough. Stone talked trash for four quarters while his team was in the fight, so Kiffin returned the favor once the game was decided. If you can dish it out, you should be able to take it. And based on the handshake afterward, it doesn’t seem like there were any hard feelings between the two.

But what’s more interesting is Kiffin’s claim that this kind of interaction isn’t just harmless banter — it’s actually helped him recruit players who’ve transferred to Ole Miss.

“Interestingly enough, I’ve had a number of players transfer over the years that said, ‘Hey, one of the reasons was we loved the way that you interacted with us on the other side during the game and we wanted to play for a coach like that,” Kiffin said.

That’s a hell of a selling point. Imagine being a defensive lineman getting chirped at by the opposing head coach during a game, then later deciding you want to play for that guy because he treats you like a peer instead of some anonymous kid on the other sideline. It’s unconventional, but it tracks for Kiffin, who has built his entire coaching persona around being the antithesis of the buttoned-up, corporate coach archetype.

Kiffin also explained that this happens more often than people realize, particularly with defensive players who view him differently than they do other coaches.

“They kind of talk to me like they do a player,” he said. “So I embrace it, probably because I give it to them sometimes too.”