Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin addressed reporters as part of a spring practice presser on Tuesday, in which he directly called out WCBI sports director Jon Sokoloff, the reporter who first tweeted about Kiffin leaving the Rebels for the Auburn job.
Kiffin, of course, did not leave for Auburn and remained with Ole Miss.
When asked about the Tigers job on Tuesday, Kiffin used the moment to take a dig at Sokoloff.
“It’s interesting you ask that on the first day I’ve seen Jon in a long time. Good to see you, Jon,” Kiffin said. “I appreciate Jon for all that chaos that he created with false information. But that allowed us to work through [an obstacle] and … help our [NIL] collective. So really our fans and our collective should thank Jon for that.”
Kiffin told ESPN in a story published earlier this week that a reason why he interviewed with Auburn was because he felt the Rebels program was lagging behind the rest of the SEC with its NIL collective. Following Kiffin’s dalliance with the Tigers, there was a significant increase in donations to the “Grove Collective” at Ole Miss, which assists student-athletes with NIL partnerships.
Kiffin clearly wasn’t thrilled with Sokoloff at the time of the tweet and likely isn’t too thrilled with him now, but it did lead to an increase in NIL assistance from the fan base that will undoubtedly help the Rebels’ program moving forward.
