MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. — People are just nicer face-to-face, Lane Kiffin says.
The Ole Miss football coach, asked about the public squabble between Nick Saban and Jimbo Fisher, downplayed the drama and said the SEC football coaches’ gathering Tuesday was “pretty normal” as the league’s spring meetings began.
“Probably the assumption is that it’s different in there than you guys think and the public thinks,” Kiffin said. “Guys have jobs to do. We’re professionals. It’s probably a lot calmer than you picture it being.”
Kiffin and LSU’s Brian Kelly were the only two coaches to speak with reporters after Tuesday’s meetings. Kiffin was asked whether Saban and Fisher talked.
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“I guess the best way to describe it is, somehow our group is more professional in the room together than they are on camera by themselves,” Kiffin said. “I kind of compare it to texts, where people like to say things on a text and they don’t in person. It’s kind of like that.”
Saban and Fisher got in a public dispute after Saban said May 18 that Texas A&M bought its entire recruiting class. Fisher held a news conference the next day, attacking Saban as he called him a narcissist and suggested the Alabama coach should have been slapped as a child.
Kiffin was scheduled for a guest appearance on “The Dan Patrick Show” after Fisher’s press conference, but SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey put a stop to it, telling the Ole Miss coach not to comment on the Saban-Fisher feud.
The spring meetings in Miramar Beach, Florida, are the first time Fisher and Saban have been face-to-face since the war of words.
Kelly said that the two respect each other.
“They weren’t wrestling in there,” the LSU coach said. “I can tell you that.”
Kiffin has been the most transparent SEC coach about name, image and likeness and its impact on the college football landscape, most notably in an interview with Sports Illustrated’s Ross Dellenger.
Kiffin was asked Tuesday about becoming a “voice of reason” on the topic of NIL.
“No, I don’t think that was on purpose,” he said. “I just think I’ve always kind of answered questions and not done the coach speak. So I’m sure you get a lot of (coaches) come up here and probably give you the same line. But that’s not really on purpose. I’ve just always been that way. ..’All right, this is what it is,’ as opposed to hiding behind all of it and saying, you know, whatever that little coach’s bible that we’re supposed to call about what you’re supposed to say. Like, ‘NIL has nothing to do with why players come to my campus.’ “
This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Did Nick Saban, Jimbo Fisher talk at SEC meeting? Lane Kiffin answers