All eyes are on Lane Kiffin going into his first season as LSU head football coach. However, while speaking to reporters at SEC Media Days, he revealed that monitoring his social media accounts won’t yield anything spicy anymore.
Kiffin said that he deleted all social media apps from his phone, initially doing so as a challenge from his son Knox. But like many who have distance themselves from social media, Kiffin realized that he liked being more offline.
“Really, it just started with Knox, my son, was sitting there and he’s like, ‘You’re on social media; I bet you couldn’t get off,’” Kiffin explained, via Baton Rouge radio host Matt Moscona. “If you follow me, if you tell me I can’t do something, that’s really a good way to get me to do it.”
“So I just got off of everything,” he continued. “Got off of it. Don’t even have the apps, so it’s not even like I read it either… I just wanted to show him I could do it. It’s been really interesting as I look back over my life and my journey, a lot of great things have come when I’ve subtracted things out of my life and I’ve eliminated them.”
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No longer being terminally online might be better for Kiffin’s mental health and cause fewer headaches for the LSU football program and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey. But it’s less fun for college football fans (and the media which covers him).
Kiffin gained a reputation for trolling fans and rival coaches (in other sports too) on social media. Asked about that during his appearance at SEC Media Days, Georgia coach Kirby Smart agreed when told that a “troll” likes to “stir the pot” and “poke fun” at rivals.
“Yep,” Smart said. “That’s him.”
Perhaps not coincidentally, Kiffin’s self-imposed exile from social media coincides with him causing an uproar with comments he made in a Vanity Fair profile about recruiting players to Ole Miss at his previous head-coaching stop in the SEC.
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Kiffin claimed that a lack of racial diversity in Oxford, Mississippi made it difficult to convince athletes to play for the Rebels. Additionally, players’ parents were put off by the school’s association with the Confederate flag, the Colonel Rebel mascot and the University of Mississippi’s “Ole Miss” nickname.
“Now it’s been a couple months and it’s been really refreshing,” Kiffin added. “I’ve talked to a lot of family, friends, even players and encouraged them to take a break because what happens is, when you’re on it — this is what I found, that you don’t really realize until you’re off of it — it’s really taken over what we used to say we were worried about our kids doing. The adults are just as bad.”
Kiffin said it’s been “freeing” to be away from social media. He’s more present in the moment, rather than comparing experiences to others, as so many of us do. However, Kiffin has not deleted his accounts, and probably won’t since they’re still a vital recruiting tool.
His last post to X was on June 18, referring back to May 11 when he was last active on social media. Posing a tiger statue atop an image of Michael Jordan, he included the quote, “They have no idea who you are becoming. Time to go ghost.”
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