You never really know how Lane Kiffin’s half-hour at the SEC Media Days podium will stray.

Deadpan and with the mischievous smirk that punctuates a sideswipe dig of a rival, the Ole Miss coach delivered again Thursday morning in Nashville.

He landed a few when doing his best to not say anything about Tennessee’s recent NCAA sanctions while letting that silence do the talking.

Later, he did the verbal equivalent of the zipped mouth-shut emoji when asked to rank the most powerful boosters in the SEC.

“God,” he said to laughter, “I want to so bad.”

But the coach who called himself “the portal king” saved his most interesting comments for … the negatives of the portal.

Kiffin doesn’t seem to like the shift of the coach-player power dynamic.

It stinks when a player can up and decide to leave after just a year on campus, he says.

“I don’t think there’s any other sports at any level that are like this, that really, you every year, can opt into free agency,” Kiffin said. “Really, twice a year. I mean, I was just thinking on the plane ride over here.

What if you had that in other sports? Tom Brady, A’Ja Wilson, Lionel Messi, LeBron James, what if every year those guys can opt to free agency, twice a year, really and they have no long-term contracts? Basically, everybody is not even on a one-month contract because they can leave in two windows.”

Is there no loyalty anymore?

One year and gone?

How’s a coach to adjust when a player who the staff figured would complete his commitment just leaves?

NIL adds another wrinkle.

“And now we are seeing you really can get paid three times if you want to,” Kiffin said later in response to a question about how to fix the NIL/transfer issue. “You can get paid coming out of high school. You can one-time transfer, go in, get the most money and get paid again. And then you can grad transfer and then get paid again.”

It’s wild.

Players who signed National Letters of Intent can find what they think is a better opportunity after a year.

“I was just so hurt by his leaving after we bought in and did everything he asked us to do. I just couldn’t stay around and listen.”

Wait, who said that?

Lane?

No, that’s defensive end Ben Martin’s quote from a 2010 story on ESPN.com after his coach stunned the locker room when announcing he was leaving. The Tennessee coach was only there a year but a better offer came along and he was out.

Martin said he didn’t even stick around to listen to Lane Kiffin’s full message to that Vol locker room in what ESPN described as an “emotionally charged” farewell meeting. One of his teammates, defensive end Chris Walker, was also quoted in the ESPN story saying he understood this is a business and he couldn’t be mad Kiffin was leaving for his dream job at USC.

Good point.

And this isn’t to say Kiffin’s outrageously wrong about the NIL/transfer ecosystem. Breaking the dam — fortified for decades to shield athletes from profiting from their image — was always going to disrupt the carefully designed power dynamics.

Sure it stinks when someone breaks a commitment but Thursday’s angle from Kiffin was rich given the history. No doubt this current disruption to the status quo will be corrected. It’s already in progress with the NCAA proposal to cut undergrad transfer windows from two to one — from 60 days in segments to 30 in one.

Kiffin said he’s telling current players to enjoy this wild west period while it lasts because the NIL salad days won’t last forever.

“Eventually you’ll not be able to do that,” he said. “I would think and have that leverage every semester to be able to do that.

“I’ve told them it’s an awesome time for them.”

Indeed.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.