{"id":1902,"date":"2025-12-03T22:30:50","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T22:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/?p=1902"},"modified":"2025-12-30T20:08:05","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T20:08:05","slug":"breaking-down-espns-relationship-with-sec-lane-kiffin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/sports-media\/breaking-down-espns-relationship-with-sec-lane-kiffin\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking Down ESPN’s Relationship With SEC, Lane Kiffin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Almost as big of a story as the college football games going on during Rivalry Week were the rumors and innuendo involving coaches making the jump from one program to another.\u00a0 And none of those jumps was covered more thoroughly than Lane Kiffin and his decision to leave Ole Miss <\/a>after Friday’s win in the Egg Bowl over Mississippi State to become the head coach at LSU.<\/p>\n

Sporting News<\/em> columnist Mike Decourcy joined TJ Rives for this week’s episode of the Last Word on Sports Media podcast, jumping straight in to the relationship between ESPN and the SEC and Lane Kiffin in particular, and how there’s one group who is suffering because of this relationship: the fans.<\/p>\n

“First of all, I’m borderline offended by anyone who defends what [Kiffin’s] done here, especially football analysts who understand what it’s like now,” Decourcy told us.\u00a0 “Lane Kiffin has been telling those athletes to make those sacrifices in practice for months, in games every Saturday for the last three, four months, and then when their biggest games approach, he says, ‘I matter, you don’t.'”<\/p>\n

How Did ESPN’s Relationship With Lane Kiffin Help?<\/h2>\n

TJ sees ESPN’s handling of the situation as almost apologizing for his behavior, and points out where the two sides merge together: with representation.\u00a0 He points out that everyone at the desk for ESPN’s College GameDay<\/em> – Rece Davis, Nick Saban, Pat McAfee, Desmond Howard, and Kirk Herbstreit – are all represented in their broadcast deals by Creative Artsists Agency (CAA), as is Kiffin.\u00a0 He feels that relationship compromises their journalistic ethics.<\/p>\n

Decourcy stopped short of going after ESPN, saying he didn’t watch a lot of College GameDay, “And by ‘not a lot,’ I don’t mean any.\u00a0 I mean none.”\u00a0 He feels that ESPN was able to get the access however they did, and in the case of Marty Smith spending two days at the Rebels offices before getting to interview Kiffin<\/a>, asked the right questions.<\/p>\n

“It’s the coach that to me, didn’t handle the whole situation properly,” Decourcy said.\u00a0 “I really didn’t have any respect for walking away from the competition. That’s not what you’re supposed to do. As I said in my column, we have a word for that, and it is the maybe one of the maybe one of the harshest or the harshest word that exists in sports, and that is he quit on his team.\u00a0 That’s what he did. Now, he tried to spin it so that he was not the bad guy. Oh, I wanted to coach them, but he he knew that that wasn’t going to happen. If he didn’t know, he was being delusional.”<\/p>\n

Listen to TJ Rives break down more of the Lane Kiffin saga with Mike Decourcy, and chaos of traveling to broadcast with Brian Dancel this week of the Last Word on Sports Media podcast<\/h3>\n