In an interview with Vanity Fair in May, Kiffin addressed some of his reasons for the move, including the most unexpected one: Black family members being concerned about racism in Mississippi in 2026."'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," he said in the interview.
"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.'"He later added that his remarks about Ole Miss were "factual."TIM BRANDO JOINS DAN DAKICH, EVISCERATES LANE KIFFIN FOR HIS RACIALLY CHARGED VANITY FAIR COMMENTS"I just hope [comments] comes across respectful to Ole Miss," he said.
"There are some things that I'm saying that are factual, they're not shots."Lane Kiffin of the Mississippi Rebels before the game against the South Carolina Gamecocks at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium on Nov.01, 2025 in Oxford, Mississippi.
(Justin Ford/Getty Images)Unsurprisingly, reactions on social media to Kiffin's claims were not positive.And there were many of them.
To the point where Kiffin later apologized, telling On3, "I really apologize if anybody at Ole Miss or in Mississippi was offended by that.In a four-hour interview, I was asked a lot of questions on a lot of things, and Ole Miss has been wonderful to me and to my family."I was asked questions about the differences in recruiting, and I said a narrative that we battled there from some out-of-state Black parents and grandparents was not wanting their kid to move to Mississippi.
That’s a narrative that coaches have been fighting forever.It wasn’t calculated by bringing it up."OLE MISS' TRINIDAD CHAMBLISS ELIGIBLE FOR SIXTH COLLEGE SEASON AFTER NCAA'S APPEAL DENIED BY JUDGEThe entire situation was odd and unnecessary, and obviously, it's highly unlikely that Black players and families did not want to ...