Lane Kiffin calls out lack of diversity among head coaches in SEC, Big 12

Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin had some strong words on Saturday about the lack of racial diversity among his SEC and Big 12 coaching peers. He pointed this out as he was asked about giving wide receivers coach Derrick Nix head coaching duties for the scrimmage as Kiffin took on coaching wideouts.

The lack of coaching diversity has been a black eye on the SEC, Big 12 and college football at-large since Kiffin was a kid, he said. And he recalled his father, Monte, pointing out that coaching isn’t a kind profession to racial minorities.

“ZERO minority coaches combined. I’m just saying what my dad used to remind of all the time on this subject and what a problem it was. It’s 2023 and we have gone backwards from when he would point it out to me and reference great coaches like [Tony Dungy, Mike Tomlin, and Lovie Smith] that I grew up idolizing,” Kiffin said on Twitter, tagging the coaches as he quote-tweeted his comments from earlier.

It should be noted that Kiffin isn’t correct in his assessment of zero minority coaches. While the SEC doesn’t have any Black coaches in 2023, it does have a head coach of Hispanic descent: Mississippi State’s Zach Arnett. The Big 12 also has Baylor head coach Dave Aranda, who is a first-generation American born to Mexican parents, and BYU head coach Kalani Sitake, a Tongan-American.

But Kiffin’s broader point is apt as minority coaches have been few and far between in college football and his own conference.

Across the sport, the number of Black head coaches has dipped heading into 2023. And none are currently leading an SEC program. The last full-time Black head coach in the SEC was Derek Mason at Vanderbilt. Carnell “Cadillac” Williams served as Auburn’s interim coach in 2022.

With these sorts of realities in mind, Kiffin gave Nix the chance to test drive being a head coach.

“That was done not as a PR thing. That was done to give him an opportunity to see what it’s like,” Kiffin said, according to Michael Katz of the Clarion-Ledger

And the head coach was left impressed by his replacement for the day.

“Coach Nix has been here. We’ve been fortunate to keep him here. He’s had a lot of opportunities to leave. Enjoy working with him, he’s done a great job. And then today, I saw a whole other level out of him with his intensity in meetings last night, in pregame meal with the players, handling depth charts, doing everything. I was inspired by listening to him this morning,” Kiffin said.

Kiffin added that plenty of great coaching talent has been overlooked and wasted — and will continue to be — if something doesn’t change.

“You can’t see how good somebody is until they get a chance to do it. That would be my wish out there to ADs and president and universities to understand that, and this is a good example,” Kiffin said.

He continued later: “So, it was really cool to step back, be able to see that. I just hope coaches like coach Nix in this profession — Black coaches that don’t get opportunities — start getting opportunities. Because it is ridiculous when we’re talking about two major conferences right here in this area, and when whatever it is, 80 percent of our players are minority but we have all white coaches. It’s really a system that needs to be fixed.”

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