48 hours after Lane Kiffin’s racially charged that ‘Black recruits’ grandparents literally blocked them from moving to Oxford because of Mississippi’s history’ take during a Vanity Fair interview, the Ole Miss head honcho scrambled to execute major damage control by releasing an official apology video with On3. That didn’t sit well with college football’s former first daughter, Kristen Saban, and a couple of big-timers in this space.
On May 13, Kristen Saban officially joined the anti-Kiffin wing. The daughter of legendary coach Nick Saban hopped onto her IG to double down on the backlash. She publicly reposted brutal call-outs from both Cam Newton and Tim Brando, sort of aligning herself with Kiffin’s biggest critics.
She first shared veteran sports commentator Tim Brando’s “narcissist” reaction to Lane Kiffin’s apology on her Instagram: “God awful apology he tried to submit to On3 yesterday. That was pathetic, a pathetic response, okay? ‘If I offended some of you,’ shut the blank up. If you offended some of us, it’s offensive, period. Don’t go there. It shouldn’t have been mentioned. Is there some truth? There are shreds of truth to maybe what a grandparent may have said to him? Dan, I’m sure there is, but he brought that up on his own,” Brando said before doubling down.
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“Why? Because his own narcissism would not allow him to get through that interview without, once again, trying to justify abandoning a team that he was coaching, which was on the precipice of playing for and maybe even winning a national championship. Enough with that. You got the job.”
This whole situation backfired badly on him, and his video apology quickly became a joke online. Instead of solving the issue, many people immediately rejected it and said the apology did not feel real.
Tim Brando said there may be some truth to the “grandfather said so” comment. But he also said Lane Kiffin used serious social issues to defend himself and take attention away from the real reason he left.
Brando believes Kiffin left an 11-win playoff team mainly because of a huge money offer, not for the reasons he mentioned in the interview.
What caught Brando’s attention most was that it was Kiffin himself constantly bringing it up throughout the interview because, according to Brando, his “narcissism” self couldn’t let it go.
Brando’s message to Kiffin was pretty straightforward: you got the LSU job and the $91 million contract, so it’s time to stop playing the fake sympathy card. Within just a few hours, Kristen doubled down by reposting a second reel featuring Cam Newton’s scathing takedown that completely dismantled Kiffin’s racial deflection.
Trying to explain why he dumped Ole Miss for a seven-year, $91 million LSU contract, Kiffin only made it way worse by praising Baton Rouge’s diversity and clumsily saying it felt like there was “no segregation.” Newton exposed Kiffin’s Vanity Fair comments as a calculated move to distract and deflect from how messy his final days at Ole Miss truly were.
“He’s trying to disrupt, all right, distract, and most importantly, he’s trying to deflect from how his last days in Oxford were. Man, shoot, I tried to tell the folk to train the mascot, twin the Rowdy Rebels.”
He made this pretty clear that Kiffin was trying to rewrite reality rather than admitting he left strictly for the money.
Newton exposes Kiffin’s fake racial awareness
Cam Newton went even further in his video, calling out Lane Kiffin’s hypocrisy about SEC history and his move to LSU Tigers. He said that every major school in the Deep South, including Starkville, Athens, Lexington, and Knoxville, has a complicated past and controversial history. Newton also pointed out that LSU’s “Tigers” nickname dates back to 1896 and is linked to Louisiana military groups from the Civil War era. He used this to push back on Kiffin’s comments and said Kiffin was being selective with history.
Newton’s message was that Kiffin was not being fully honest or consistent. He suggested that Kiffin was picking and choosing parts of history to support his own argument, instead of looking at the full picture.
Newton and his co-host ended the segment brutally clapping back at Kiffin’s selective memory, stating, “You can’t play me, brother, no PlayStation.”
By sharing these videos from Newton and Tim Brando on her public platform, Kristen Saban added more fuel to the backlash against Kiffin. Overall, the reactions from Brando and Newton show how much criticism Kiffin is facing right now. With tensions rising, the situation has become even more intense ahead of LSU’s big and highly charged road game at the University of Mississippi on September 19.
