Lane Kiffin opened the door for fans to make him the butt of plenty of jokes on Saturday. One question into his pregame interview with CBS’s Jamie Erdahl, the Ole Miss head coach said “get your popcorn ready” and threw the CBS headset down as he ran over to his sideline. The incident went viral and after his Rebels fell behind 35-0 against the top-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide, so did the jokes.
On Monday, Kiffin wanted to make it clear that he knows the incident looked bad. He couldn’t explain why he thought it was a good idea, and he is embarrassed by it.
“I don’t even know why it came out and I actually said to [offensive coordinator Jeff] Lebby, I got on the headsets and said, ‘I just said something really stupid. You better score a lot of points,'” he told reporters according to ESPN.
Lane Kiffin had spent most of last week entangled in something of a controversy after Mike Wilbon said the Ole Miss coach had been an embarrassment everywhere he goes. The last thing he wanted to do was give someone like Wilbon more fodder.
After seeing the video of the incident, Kiffin says he reached out to Erdahl.
“When I found out afterwards that it looked rude, which it did, I contacted Jamie and made sure that she knew that was not on purpose,” Kiffin said. “I apologize for that. It was not done on purpose at all. Looked like it, though. I saw it.”
To Lane Kiffin’s credit, he seemed fine with the jokes. He has always been accessable on Twitter, and when he found out that Alabama’s mascot Big Al took to the field during the game in a popcorn bucket costume, he gave the gag credit for being funny.
