LSU coach Lane Kiffin is now claiming that top recruits were frequently worried they would face racism if they accepted his offer to attend the University of Mississippi when he was head coach for Ole Miss.
Kiffin, who accepted the head coaching position at Louisiana State University in December, ran the Ole Miss football program from 2020 to last year, and is now saying that Ole Miss had a more sinister reputation with many who were only familiar with the state of Mississippi’s past history of racism.
The 51-year-old top coach told Vanity Fair that he sometimes had a problem getting black recruits because they worried they might face racism at the Oxford, Mississippi, campus.
Kiffin told the magazine that some recruits would tell him, “Hey, coach, we really like you. But my grandparents aren’t letting me move to Oxford, Mississippi.”
“That doesn’t come up when you say Baton Rouge, Louisiana,” Kiffin continued. “Parents were sitting here this weekend saying the campus’s diversity feels so great: ‘It feels like there’s no segregation. And we want that for our kid because that’s the real world.’”
Vanity Fair added that Kiffin called them back after the interview to assure them he was not just taking shots at Ole Miss with his statement about some recruits’ fears.
“I just hope [my comment] comes across respectful to Ole Miss,” he explained. “There are some things that I’m saying that are factual; they’re not shots.”
The magazine noted that the population of Baton Rouge, where Kiffin is now coaching, is about 51% Black and 36% white. Meanwhile, Oxford, Mississippi, is 66% white and 26% Black.
Regardless, it appears that Kiffin has made some headway with his recruiting for LSU.
Kiffin will preside over his first game with the Tigers on September 5.
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