Lane Kiffin is college football's master of social media trolling.
He's taken it to an art form. Don't sleep on him as the 'King of Backhanded Compliments.'
Asked about advanced metrics to be deployed in College Football Playoff selection criteria during Wednesday's initial SEC Coaches' Teleconference of the 2025 season, Kiffin effectively said, "Yeah, about time."
"Well, obviously I'm not in charge, but you know that I think that that sounds good, metrics and finally using it more," Kiffin said. "Should’ve been that way already. It's kind of unfortunate that we're that far behind other (NCAA) sports that they’ve already figured out.
"Wish they would have that more figured out and finalized versus just saying, 'Oh, it’s going to be used' and you still have the humans deciding. But, I'm not really into that right now, That’s a year from now. I'm trying to get ready for opener."
In addition to saying the enhanced strength-of-schedule emphasis, among additional new data points that the CFP announced would be "current schedule strength metric has been adjusted to apply greater weight to games against strong opponents."
Kiffin emphasized that the SEC should know beyond a doubt that those elements would be effectively adhered to with the league's decision to "make the hardest schedules in the country even harder" with the SEC's recent announcement that it would adopt a nine-game conference slate, effective in 2026. Ole Miss has an October non-conference game at home against Washington State that was necessitated by Wake Forest's abrupt and stunning decision to backtrack of its contracted trip to Oxford. Mississippi, this year. Ole Miss routed Wake Forest last year in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
"If we're going to take the hardest schedules in the country, by far, and make them harder," Kiffin said, "you would like to know that it is going to matter in the (CFP) selection process and matter, really, you know matter a lot. It does.
"It matters who you play, where you play, how hard they are and that’s how you end up with judging win and loss records instead of just looking at win and loss records."
Kiffin's sixth Ole Miss team opens its season Saturday at home against Georgia State. The No. 21 Rebels then immediately begin SEC play on the road a week later at Kentucky, which noted its only league win a year ago in a stunning upset-win at Ole Miss.