Lane Kiffin has college football right back where it so often seems to end up: in the middle of a mess.
This latest flare-up started with the fifth-year eligibility lawsuits, which have shoved the sport into the courtroom again and reopened the kind of roster chaos that had mostly settled down. But the flashpoint this time is LSU’s push to sign tight end Dae’Quan Wright and defensive lineman Zxavian Harris, both of whom were released by NFL teams in August.
That move has triggered plenty of anger. Fans, pundits and just about everybody else have taken shots at Kiffin.
His own conference piled on too, voting for a new rule that would have brought harsh penalties for any school - cough, LSU, cough - that added a player who had previously signed a contract with a pro team. Louisiana has challenged that rule legally.
Kiffin defended the decision by saying his players’ leadership committee was enthusiastic about bringing NFL players onto the roster. That only added fuel to the fire, and longtime critic Paul Finebaum called the explanation a “flat-out lie.”
While the public fight has played out in court and on the airwaves, a more entertaining side battle has been brewing among coaches. The shots have been quieter, but they’ve landed all the same.
Texas coach Steve Sarkisian was first up on Monday, and he never once said Kiffin’s name. He didn’t need to.
“... And I just can’t spend all day long looking at Twitter or X to see what’s the next court ruling.
I know other people do,” Sarkisian said Monday. “I don’t know how they do it.
I can only focus on what we do to put our players in the best interest to be successful. And I think that’s the right thing.
I really do.”
He kept going.
“... These players on all of our rosters have been working for nine months for this moment on Saturday, which then will lead into the next five-to-six months,” Sarkisian continued.
“The fact that somebody out there is going to take a player off of an NFL roster and tell somebody who’s been doing it for nine months, ‘Go kick rocks?’ That doesn’t sit well with me.
I think that’s wrong. That morally is wrong.”
Somebody out there. You can connect the dots.
Then came Clemson coach Dabo Swinney, and he was much less interested in dancing around the issue. With his team set to open the season on the road against LSU, Swinney called the whole situation “embarrassing.”
“... I would just say it’s kind of embarrassing,” Swinney said of NFL players returning to college.
“I mean honestly, it’s just embarrassing that that’s where we are. I don’t blame the kids and people trying to take advantage of the system.
I just think it’s embarrassing where we are with college football.
“And we’ve been there for awhile. I just keep my energy, my focus on the things that I control and the things that matter and that’s these kids here and our team.
But all that outside stuff, I mean, we just kind of-no pun intended-we just stay in our lane here at Clemson. Try to.”
Earlier in the same news conference, Swinney joked that he might get “turned in for tampering” because he watched practice footage of the Cowboys, Buccaneers, Wright’s Browns and Harris’s Saints in August.
The public outrage, the legal wrangling, the Finebaum routine - that’s all familiar territory by now. What’s more fun is the way coaches are starting to lob these little grenades without ever saying the name attached to them.
That’s the college football show. And the first Saturday in Baton Rouge, followed by the second Saturday in November, is going to turn the subtext into something a lot more direct.
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