ATLANTA – We are wrapping up day one of SEC Media Days. The event is taking place at the College Football Hall of Fame. LSU, South Carolina, Ole Miss, and Vanderbilt were the four teams participating in the event on Monday. Texas will be front and center on Tuesday.
Here are five things you need to know from Monday’s event:
1. Feel free to call this the Lane Kiffin Show. The event lacked a lot of fireworks, but Kiffin lit the spark.
Kiffin was asked about tweets that have been directed toward Auburn football coach Hugh Freeze and did not hold back.
“I have a thing with him going back a few years ago when he posted a picture in response to me of like some two-pound bass or something like that. So, I kind of always posted bigger fish pictures back towards him. Had nothing to do with his golf game, which sounds like he’s doing amazing at that.
That’s great for him.
Q. Lane —
LANE KIFFIN: And I was fishing yesterday in the dead period, by the way.”
2. Kiffin touched on some programs circumventing the rules.
Here is what Kiffin said:
“I think we’ve done a good job of putting together this roster, working within this cap. If you go back to retention of last year’s players and the portal guys December, January, we went into that operating under this cap because we were told the settlement was most likely going to get approved and how that would work.
“We get a lot of questions like, what’s it like now? We’ve been operating — we have — under these cap guidelines of what was coming and what it was going to look like. I think we’ve done a really good job of that. Obviously means you can’t sign as many players as you would like at times because you have a budget. So we’re obviously hopeful that will be rewarded by doing that. I think it’s obvious people aren’t staying within that cap, so I think the whole thing will be, what does that look like? That’s what we don’t know. What does it look like when you don’t and what are the punishments for that? Do you win and that comes later?
“So that’s remained to be seen, but already got the questions about the cap, what that’s like having to do that. We’ve been doing that for a while, operating on that.”
In addition, Kiffin said:
“So now some teams go out and go way above the cap, way above what you would think they would do if they were monitoring their cap on a specific player. I think because of that, now you’re seeing more one-offs where the player, 5-star player, that traditionally would go to these couple schools now goes to this other school.
“It’s kind of like something is up, right? Getting more money, obviously. So I think it’s going to level out a little bit if this is the direction it’s going to where you’re going to see not all the players stacked up at the top at a couple schools.”
3. LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier on Arch Manning (his roommate at the Manning Passing Academy):
“I love Arch. He’s a great dude, great player. I’m excited for him. Went through a similar experience I had to go through in waiting for your time and waiting for your opportunity. I think that he’s very prepared. Obviously, comes from a very prestigious family who understands the game very well. More than most, obviously.
“But I’m very excited for him. I think he’s going to do very well. His mindset is great. He doesn’t feel like he’s earned anything, even though I believe he already has because of the type of player he is. So I’m excited to watch him go prove it. And I’m really rooting for him.”
4. South Carolina coach Shane Beamer’s response when asked about playoff expansion and potentially moving to a nine-game conference schedule:
“I’m all for expansion to give more teams opportunities. I wanted to make sure — we have the greatest regular season in any sport in college athletics in my opinion. Every regular season game means something. You want to make sure that the regular season doesn’t lose meaning, and confident that it won’t, if we expand. It’ll still make a lot more games meaningful in the month of November.
“And then gives more teams opportunities to go compete for a championship, which is what everybody wants. We went into the last weekend last year against Clemson, Thanksgiving weekend, and not just us, but there were a lot of teams around the country that felt like they still had an opportunity to get into that 12-team playoff. I’m all for it.
“In regards to the eight and the nine game, competition is a core value of our program. I’m never going to shy away from competition. I just said we just have a schedule we get to play, but we also get to play Clemson every season as well. That’s a non-conference rival that we have that not every school in this league has. Florida plays a non-conference rival from another conference. Georgia does as well. Then Kentucky does. But I think we’re the only ones. I know everyone is going to play Power 4, Power 5 teams in the regular season typically, but in my mind we’re always playing nine conference games. If we go to nine we’re now playing ten conference games.
“We’ve also got future schedules with Miami, Virginia Tech this year, North Carolina, North Carolina State. So I’m all for competition; I want to make sure that other teams in this league aren’t the playing nine SEC games and playing three whatever you want to call them games that they should win. Because not very smart as the head coach of? South Carolina to be doing that if that’s what the other teams in this league aren’t doing.”
5. Here is Tuesday’s lineup (Central Time):
9:05 a.m. to 10:35 a.m. – Georgia coach Kirby Smart
11:15 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. – Auburn coach Hugh Freeze
12:30 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Tennessee coach Josh Heupel
2:15 p.m. to 2:45 p.m. – Texas coach Steve Sarkisian
