Mississippi coach Lane Kiffin delivers emotional tribute to father at SEC media days

DALLAS ― Ole Miss football coach Lane Kiffin used to watch his father write a simple phrase on the chalkboard during his coaching days.

"Show up."

That was the doctrine Monte Kiffin asked his players to live by, and it's what Lane Kiffin did on Monday when he took the stage at SEC media days following his father's death on July 11 at the age of 84.

"The first rule of getting better was you gotta show up, show up and do your job. And that's what I'm trying to do here," Kiffin said.

In an emotional tribute to his father ‒ considered one of the best defensive minds of his time and the architect of Tampa Bay's Super Bowl-winning "Tampa 2" defense − Kiffin thanked the Oxford and Ole Miss communities for their support during what he described as a "challenging" week.

"It's been an amazing outpouring of support, of stories from former players, former coaches and especially former staff of people in the building and how many friends came out of that in the Bucs community and family," Kiffin said.

Kiffin said that SEC Media Days was not the setting to go in-depth on his father's passing, pointing instead toward a celebration of life scheduled for noon on Saturday at Indian Rocks Baptist Church in Largo, Florida.

He did, however, spin a tale about one of his childhood friends.

"I've talked before about him being my hero. I had a middle school friend," Kiffin said. "And he said hero is not really the right term for (Monte). It's superhero. That's what he was to the people that he touched. He used this term and now I'm using this term in description of him because I really feel like there's very few superheroes and very few great ones that loved everyone and tried to help everyone they came in touch with forever. Whether you were big or small, whatever you were, he tried to help."

Monte spent the latter part of his life working for his son. He was on staff as an analyst in Oxford, and also worked at Florida Atlantic, Southern California and Tennessee.