OXFORD, Miss. — Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin said “dynasties are over” in the SEC after the league added Oklahoma and Texas and recently announced it will play a ninth conference game starting in 2026.
Kiffin, whose Rebels (5-0) are ranked No. 4 in The Associated Press Top 25 poll after last week’s 24-19 victory against LSU, said name, image and likeness rules and the transfer portal have also leveled the playing field in the 16-team SEC, making it harder for programs to stay on top.
He said SEC programs will no longer be able to stockpile talent as former Alabama coach Nick Saban did while winning six national championships from 2007 to 2023 and Georgia coach Kirby Smart did when capturing back-to-back CFP national titles at his alma mater in 2021 and 2022.
“In my opinion, the dynasties are over,” Kiffin told ESPN on Wednesday. “Alabama with Coach Saban and then Kirby at Georgia, where they had those rosters year in, year out and there would be a bunch of wins by 30 points in the conference, those days are done.”
Kiffin was Alabama’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach from 2014 to 2016, helping the Crimson Tide finish 14-1 and beat Clemson 45-40 in the CFP National Championship after the 2015 season.
“When I was at Alabama, they’d be like, ‘Go watch the outside linebackers,’ and there’s six of them over there that are first-round picks,” Kiffin said. “That’s not going to happen anymore because if they don’t play, then they’re going to leave. They can’t keep them all anymore.”
Editor’s Picks
2 Related
Under the SEC’s new schedule, teams will play three annual opponents to maintain traditional rivalries, and the remaining six games will rotate among the other 12 league members, so programs will face each other at least once every two seasons. Teams are also required to play at least one quality nonconference game against a school from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and Notre Dame every season.
Kiffin, who is 49-18 in six seasons at Ole Miss, said he didn’t want the SEC to add a ninth conference game, which was done to increase revenue, improve fan experience with an additional game against a quality opponent and get the league in line with the Big Ten’s scheduling model.
“You’re going to have really good teams going 8-4 because we’re going to play nine conference teams, including five on the road,” Kiffin said. “The conference has never been this balanced, and it never used to have Texas and Oklahoma, two top-10 teams and two of the hardest places in the country to play.
“My concern for the programs and for the coaches is that fans aren’t going to be able to get used to the numbers being different, the wins and losses. If you’re a program that’s used to being a nine- or 10-win team and you go 7-5, your fans are going to think the team is terrible and the coach is terrible. But you might have lost four road games at Georgia, Florida, LSU and Alabama.”
Vanderbilt, traditionally the SEC’s worst program, went 7-6 last season and upset No. 1 Alabama 40-35. This year, the Commodores are 5-0 and ranked 16th heading into Saturday’s game at No. 10 Alabama (3:30 p.m. ET, ABC).
Commodores coach Clark Lea has relied heavily on the transfer portal to rebuild his alma mater’s roster, including bringing in star quarterback Diego Pavia and tight end Eli Stowers from New Mexico State in 2024.
Mississippi State went 7-17 in the two seasons after former coach Mike Leach’s death in December 2022, including 2-10 under current coach Jeff Lebby in 2024. The Bulldogs brought in 31 transfers with 168 career starts before this season. They are 4-1 and upset then-No. 12 Arizona State 24-20 on Sept. 6.
“If a team in the bottom half is down for a couple of years, they won’t stay down for long anymore because they can go buy and fix their problems,” Kiffin said. “There are so many kids that want to play and go to the portal. They want to play in the SEC, so they’ll go to what you would maybe call the bottom-tier programs. They’ll fix their problems and won’t stay bad.”
Going forward, Kiffin hopes more weight will be put on schedule strength and other analytics when teams are picked for the College Football Playoff. The CFP announced on Aug. 20 that enhancements were made to the tools it uses to “assess schedule strength and how teams perform against their schedule,” including adding “greater weight to games against strong opponents.”
Kiffin said he would have preferred that SEC teams play an annual game against a Big Ten opponent, rather than another conference game, to produce an additional data point that might have differentiated SEC teams from one another.
“It can’t be these people deciding who gets in the playoff,” Kiffin said. “We’ve got to get back to analytics and computers. Baseball and basketball have the RPI where they take into account margin of victory, who you play, where you play and all of that.”
Last season, Kiffin criticized the CFP selection committee for taking Indiana and SMU over three SEC teams that went 9-3: Alabama, Ole Miss and South Carolina. The Rebels thumped No. 3 Georgia 28-10 at home but fell to unranked Kentucky 20-17 at home and Florida 24-17 on the road.
“Are you better than the 10-2 Big Ten team or ACC team? Well, you took away 16 nonconference games, so you really don’t know,” Kiffin said. “It’s just like the records in college football are so burned into our heads that 11-1 is so much better than 10-2 and so much better than 9-3, but it’s so different because you’re in these different conferences.”
