Be Miss Rebels coach Lane Kiffin preaches on accountability to the team after she has lost 30 pounds during the offseason

When Lane Kiffin met his team on Saturday night before Ole Miss’s first training session on Sunday, he had recognition.

Kiffin, who is now more than 30 pounds lighter than at the end of last season, said it was hypocritical to ask his players to be more committed to taking care of his body when he himself was overweight.

“I saw a picture of me in a bowl game last year and told the players that I looked like an anaconda that was swallowing deer and a deer stuck in its neck,” Kiffin told ESPN in the best self-despising voice.

Kiffin said the players shouted by his analogy, but he wanted them to know he was serious about the discipline the rebels are taking in the second step this season when they went 5-5 years ago in Kiffin’s first season in Oxford. .

“It applies to all of us, starting with me,” Kiffin said. “Here I am in the post-January meetings where I tell my offensive lineers and other friends that they need to eat better, lose weight, get in better shape and I looked like a whale.”

Be Miss quarterback Matt Corral, who passed 3,337 yards and 29 goals last season, said the entire team has been inspired by Kiffin’s weight loss.

“We really saw his weight change,” Corral said. “He lost a lot of weight since January, and as players and seeing him go through this process it makes us more disciplined and helps us understand the values ​​and principles of the organization.”

Kiffin remembers seeing a picture of himself, defender John Rhys Plumlee and Kiffin’s father from Monte Kiff’s Outback Bowl last season in Tampa.

“My dad is 81 and still looks good, and then I was there,” Kiffin said.

So Kiffin, 46, got to work thanks to a strict diet and exercise routine that included Pilates and yoga, and he also started running. At one point, Kiffin said he weighed as much as 245 pounds, but now he’s closer to 210.

At a meeting on Saturday, he said the players joked that he looked almost cracked.

Kiffin also has no plans to let his assistant coaches off the hook. He said he took several of them to a health facility to measure his body mass index (BMI). The doctor told offensive coordinator / defense coach Jeff Lebby that he had to drop 88 pounds to reach the ideal body mass index.

Kiffin said he replied, “Come on, give him something realistic,” and Lebby whispered, “Eighty-eight pounds? It’s 12 years old.”

Kiffin added that the entire staff will have a weight loss competition between now and the rebels ’opening game starting on September 6th and Louisville, with each coach putting $ 200 into the pool. The winner takes it all.

At least one of the images of the heavier version of Kiffin has been removed from the walls of the Ole Miss football complex.

“I have to continue with the same pattern because when I look at myself from last season, it was disgusting,” said Kiffin, who was an avid runner when he started his first college head coach position in 2009 in Tennessee.

Kiffin said responsibility is one of Ole Miss’s top themes as the 2021 season comes. Earlier in the day, she said Ole Miss had achieved a 100% vaccination rate against COVID-19 among current players, coaches and football program staff.