Lane Kiffin didn’t have much to say about his former program’s predicament.
The NCAA issued an $8 million fine and five years of probation against Tennessee for multiple recruiting violations. During Thursday’s SEC Media Days, via the Knoxville News Sentinel (h/t On3), Kiffin was immediately greeted with Kiffin’son about the penalties.
“Well, that didn’t take long,” he commented.
Kiffin, who coached”the Volunteers in 2009, didn’t want to discuss his conference competitor.
“I’ve got a lot of thoughts on that case and the case at USC and the case at Tennessee and penalties and all that,” Kiffin said. “I’m not really gonna get into that. I’m more here to talk about the Ole Miss team.”
Ole Miss football coach Lane Kiffin spoke about the Tennessee recruiting scandal on Thursday at SEC Media Days in Nashville. https://t.co/J8KTfMZKks pic.twitter.com/U9yGoH2OSX
— GoVolsXtra (@GoVolsXtra) July 20, 2023
But Kiffin added that he’s “happy” for Volunteers head coach Josh Heupel, whose program didn’t get hit as hard as Ole Miss from Kiffin’s perspective.
“I read where he was ecstatic about the penalties and the $8 million fine,” Kiffin continued. “So, that probably tells you about how severe the penalties are in their eyes, so I’m happy for them that they don’t have to go through what we went through.”
Ole Miss faced steep penalties for multiple violations from Hugh Freeze’s coaching tenure. Along with a two-year playoff ban in 2017 and 2018, the NCAA imposed scholarship reductions and forced the program to vacate 33 wins from 2010 to 2016.
While Tennessee lost 28 scholarships, the program avoided a postseason ban. The team must vacate all 11 wins from the 2019 and 2020 seasons.