OT: Lane Kiffin (!) blasts state of CFB at SEC Media Days
Lane Kiffin, of all people, went off in his press conference at SEC Media Days, calling the current era of NIL and the transfer portal a "disaster."
Of course this is coming from a coach who brought in 38 transfers the last two years and whose school's NIL collective has allegedly raised over $10 million.
Obviously he's not content to let Nick Saban be the most hypocritical and insincere coach in the SEC.
It always amazes me how shameless people can be so successful financially.
If you read his comments, Kiffin is right that the current process (or lack thereof) of NIL and the transfer portal is bad for college football. And he is perfectly candid that he tries to work it to his advantage. Just like everybody else.
He is right. It is a disaster and some type of rules and regulations need to be put in place
Yeah but he wants the rules to apply to everyone else. He's just mad the playing field is kind of level.
Doubt it.
Kiffin is legit.
"Kiffin is legit" is a sentence I never thought I'd read.
I think you have nailed the correlation. The richest guy I know personally, started his company by buying gas stations. He would keep a bic lighter by the cash register and ring it up everytime some one bought something. If anyone said anything he just said he thought they were getting the lighter since it was on the counter. He would sell the same lighter hundreds of times a day. He is now a high 100's millionaire (not from gas stations, he bought old peoples gas rights for natural gas).
This is not to say all rich people are shaddy. Just to be clear.
Not all, but market dynamics incentivize fraud. If you aren’t defrauding (I.e. extracting more value than you provide) your customers, business partners, the employees, and/or the public in a carefully calculated capacity, you’re gonna lose to someone who is.
That's not how economics works. Transactions are not zero-sum, and both sides can extract more value (to them) than the value (to them) of what they give up, because the two sides value things differently. That's not fraud for either side.
The percentage of transactions where this happens is extremely small, and I would say it's the exception to the rule.
The market capitalization of the S&P 500 was valued at $12T in 2011, $17T in 2015, $21T in 2019 and now at $37T. This has hugely outpaced inflation and the population of the US, so the economy is definitely not a zero sum game. Our market economy is far from perfect and should be better distributed, but that's still a lot of win-win in my book and not the exception.
Unfortunately, there are many places in the world where win-win is the exception rather than the rule, but fortunately not most of us living in Western economies.
Fair, but this lacks a few important considerations.
First, how equitable is the distribution of that market cap? Trends I've seen indicate that increasing proportions of wealth are being extracted by equity holders. Wages for college degree type positions have outpaced inflation as well but have they kept pace with equity growth? This in combination with the rampant issue of wage theft represents costs imposed upon the workforce.
Second, the boom bust cycle. We see periods of growth and periods of retraction, as well as other disruptive events (such as COVID-19 and post-recession QE) which exacerbate the long term trend of wealth in terms of purchasing power or leverage accumulating into increasingly consolidated groups of persons relative to population growth. The costs associated with these events, such as reductions in access to capital, are disproportionately felt by those who depend upon access to capital markets for growth as opposed to those who can simply hunker down and ride it out. Their relative positions in terms of wealth/purchasing power tend to be enhanced following the disruptive events.
Third, looking at equity growth is all upside. If we aren't factoring in the accumulation of often invisible costs (negative externalities) associated with this growth, such as toxification/degradation of environment, physical damages, health issues (physical and mental), reduction in standards of living or personal satisfaction, opportunity losses, privatizaton of public assets, etc. then we aren't getting an accurate picture. These are also costs imposed upon the public.
Now I'll also say that there are plenty of win-win scenarios as you've described, and the mechanisms of capitalism at its best, by incentivizing investment and innovation, create an enormous amount of real growth. But the market tends to reward those who exploit asymmetries -- in particular, asymmetries related to knowledge/valuations, access to capital/resources, or pure financial leverage. Running a high-integrity business --where no one gets ripped off-- is more costly than running an exploitative business, so over time, the proportion of win-win transactions would be expected to diminish in favor of asymmetrical transactions. And if you look at where we see the most growth --hedge funds and tech come to mind-- it's in areas of greater abstraction where exploitation of asymmetries is less costly to exercise.
Tl;dr - our methods of accounting are built to tell equity holders how much richer they're getting, not how much objective, tangible, or public value is being created. So it doesn't get to the bottom of what I'm talking about.
This works in theory, but in reality tangible resources are limited and most importantly access to resources is limited.
There is subjective value and objective value. A person being defrauded by, let's go with an easy example, televangelists may experience something like value as they are deluded into thinking money will amazingly manifest in their bank some day as long as they keep funneling it to the crook on TV. But in reality, the material conditions of their life and financial situation deprecate. So while Adam Smith was right to observe the relativistic nature of value in a very post-modern sense, let's also recognize that this idea has limitations and can't be used to hand-wave away abusive behavior.
Like every sport's trade. The goal is that both team's win and both better themselves vis-a-vis all of the other teams.
that's not "capitalism incentivizing greed". Your friend is a psycho.
Actually, his "friend" is a thief! Who probably has had shoplifters arrested on more than 1 occasion.
It’s not a coincidence #kaliyuga
Whenever an SEC coach goes off about anything related to players making money, I laugh. Kiffin was at Bama and fully understands how big of an advantage it is to have a NIL collective that nobody else is supposed to have. Come on, where's the competitive edge if players have a choice to leave if they were lied to, and they also can make money anywhere.
Both sides are guilty of “lying”. You think there aren’t athletes pocketing cash then jumping ship? The only way NIL reform occurs is if it holds both parties accountable. We are heading towards some form of employee/employer contract that holds both parties accountable. We’ll have to wait and see what that looks like.
Well it is a disaster. He's right as usual.
I've always been so confused by Lane Kiffin, he looks like such a dweeb but players keep signing up to play for him because he's a dork that... mouths off? Apart from the nepotism, I don't really get it.
You're not wrong about his appearance, but..... what about Harbaugh screams "come play football for me?" other than his success? Half the time he's got some wild soundbite, like chicken being a nervous bird. Or there's stories about him climbing trees or sleeping on a kicker's floor.
It works for college kids. *shrug*
Fair point, though the success gap is so very wide. Harbaugh was runner up for NFL MVP whereas Kiffin... got into coaching because his dad wouldn't let him quit the team as a backup at Fresno State.
Proven success on the field
Proven success getting guys into the NFL
Consistent stories indicate he really puts the players interest first (“Blake you should go to the NFL and not come back”)
Consistent reputation for meritocracy
Reputation as an innovator and solid Xs and Os coach who is highly competitive
Examples of trying to grow players intellectually (e.g., trips to Rome and South Africa)
Reputation as growing a family culture in his program
Seems to NOT be a dirt bag and someone who walks the talk (e.g., volunteers at prison ministry each year)
but maybe that’s just me drinking the kool aid
think that's bad, google his ex-wife and you'll want to walk into the ocean with rocks in your pocket.
Jim says hi
I think it’s less about Kiffin and more a combination of him and where he works. Bama, USC, Ole Miss….programs where elite athletes want to go, coupled with a coach and program not interested in being ethical.
I get a little sick of people (not just on this board) calling coaches hypocritical for expressing frustration with the portal/NIL because they themselves earn a lot of money.
I mean, both Saban and Kiffin played college football. Neither of them got paid for it, while their coaches presumably were earning decent salaries. They are not asking the players to go through anything that they didn't go through. Now if they had received huge pay packages as players and then subsequently took a stand against it for players today then that would be hypocritical.
I'm pretty sure college football is headed for a fall. And honestly I don't even care. If these kids want cash then by all means go get it. But I'd rather my university didn't get dirty playing this game.
It depends on their complaints and why they’re making them. Coaches bemoan NIL but I don’t remember many of them advocating for alternative over the table ways for them to make money. So rings hollow to me in many cases (like Dabo). I hate when coaches complain about the portal because they think kids are soft, yet you’d be hard pressed to find a coach that never processed a kid. Why should a kid be forced to stick with a decision when coaches are not always held to the same standard?
Definitely think there needs to be a way to enforce NIL rules but that’s on the NCAA for kicking the can down the road for decades. Should also be some stricter transfer rules (like the one time no sit out rule, and immediate eligibility for grad transfers).
College football is a much bigger business now than when either of those guys played, though, and coaches' salaries have way outpaced inflation to reflect that. Even that ignores all the extra money Saban makes from commercials. I don't think anybody's paying Lane big bucks to endorse anything, so he gets a pass.
I always get so sick of these comments. Every time someone brings up something like this and I say “so get rid of the coach’s salaries, huge stadiums, TV deals, scholarships, and reduced admission requirements and everything else that makes college football NFL-lite and go the way of Chicago” all you get is crickets.
Speaking of disasters...
The OP left out the part about him looking like he shotgunned a fifth of moonshine.
The fifth was just this morning. He looks like he's been on a week-long bender. Geez.
Don't know why but seeing Lane made me think of this character.
Probably due to the hair
Looks like an SNL skit of SEC Media Days.
I generally don't mind Lane Kiffin. And on this topic, i agree with him. The current system is bad for college football for a number of reasons. He lists out a lot of them in the article (I actually read a different article from the Athletic, but I assume they used the same quotes).
He flat out says that the system has been good for him and that he has profited from it. There is nothing wrong with both taking advantage of the system in place while at the same time thinking it is not ideal.
Clarence Thomas likes your message
So does literally every politician, who can magically make $200k and “serve” for 6-8 years and be worth $100m when leaving office
To be clear, I wasn’t trying to be political with this. It was more tongue-in-cheek because he has openly admitted that he has benefited from a system that he doesn’t agree with. My comment could have been about anyone but I understand why people saw this as a political comment. I’ll take the L on this one
LOL you knew what you were doing.
Nancy Pelosi and her husband who loves men say hi.
You need to be knocked into Bolivia at minimum.
August 29th, 2023 at 12:27 PM ^
I brought him back from Bolivia yesterday after a one-month sentence. We'll see if he's been reformed.
Really?
Bi-Dumb has made HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS taking money from foreign powers.
I'll hang up and listen while you defend this garbage.
Shut the fuck up.
I will second the motion.
What happened to the no politics rule? Why is this suffered to live?
I just saw this, thanks to a couple folks notifying us in the Mod Sticky thread.
"Bdogg46" will be getting, at minimum, a lengthy Bolivian vacation (I'll do a further inspection of his posting history before deciding if it'll be permanent).
"Macenblu" quickly realized the can of worms that he'd opened up and apologized, so we're good there.
[edit @ 2:30: A full month off for bdogg46, further details on the Mod Sticky thread. And as a result of the inspection of numerous bdogg46 posts, I'm now looking further at the posting history of a couple other folks. More warnings may yet be issued.