Former Ole Miss Coach Kermit Davis Responds To 'Pitiful' Lane Kiffin Interview

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We're still a few months away from the start of the 2026 college football season, and yet, Lane Kiffin has already found a way to dominate the headlines.

As if leaving Ole Miss for LSU before the start of the College Football Playoff wasn't bad enough, Kiffin threw shade at his former employer during an interview with Vanity Fair. He said he faced a recruiting disadvantage when he was the coach of the Rebels.

"[They would say], 'Hey, Coach, we really like you. But my grandparents aren't letting me move to Oxford, Mississippi,'" Kiffin told the magazine. "That doesn't come up when you say Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Parents were sitting here this weekend saying the campus' diversity feels so great: 'It feels like there's no segregation. And we want that for our kid because that's the real world.'"

Kermit Davis, who coached the Ole Miss men's basketball team from 2018-2023, spoke to Chris Childers of SiriusXM Radio on Thursday. He revealed that he wasn't too thrilled about Kiffin's interview with Vanity Fair.

“It’s really kind of a pitiful day, in my opinion. When he said all these things, and I watched Oxford from first-hand experience embrace him in an unbelievable way, and he even said it – that 'I needed Oxford more than Oxford needed me,'" Davis told Childers, via Awful Announcing. "For him to kind of throw shade on historical paths of Mississippi and not talk about Ole Miss now, which is one of the most inviting campuses in America. … It shocked a lot of people, a lot of close friends of mine. I think there was a lot of people that were really disappointed."

Lane has already apologized to his former school.

Kiffin apologized to Ole Miss just one day after his interview with Vanity Fair was published.

"I really apologize if anybody at Ole Miss or in Mississippi was offended by that," Kiffin said. "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."

Despite this apology from Kiffin, he's expected to receive a cold welcome on Sept. 19 when LSU takes on Ole Miss at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.

This story was originally published by The Spun on May 15, 2026, where it first appeared in the College Football section. Add The Spun as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

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