Lane Kiffin Blames the SEC for a Daytime Alabama Kickoff. LSU Is 1-6 in Its Last Seven Night Games Against the Tide.
Lane Kiffin found out Alabama comes to Baton Rouge at 2:30 in the afternoon, and he did what Lane Kiffin does.
“I never even considered that it wouldn’t be at night,” he said on the SEC coaches teleconference Wednesday. “I just assumed, especially since the last 16 years, this game has been at night here all the time. I guess that’s probably naive of me.”
Then he got to the point. “If someone thinks the SEC wants us to win this year after what’s been going on, they must’ve just been on Mars the last four months. I guess when I look at it that way, I’m not surprised.”
What Was Actually Announced
The SEC released Week 11 kickoff times on Monday. Alabama at LSU is set for Saturday, November 7, at 2:30 p.m. CT on ABC at Tiger Stadium. Both teams are on a bye this weekend.
Kiffin’s complaint has a factual spine. The last time Alabama played in Baton Rouge in anything other than a night slot was 2010. He also noticed that Ole Miss, where he coached for six seasons before taking the LSU job, got a primetime window for Georgia on the same date.
Here is the part that undercuts him: ESPN, not the conference office, makes these kickoff decisions under its television agreement. Kiffin aimed at the SEC for something a network largely controls.
The Night Game Edge He Is Defending Does Not Exist
This is where the argument falls apart. CBS Sports went back through LSU’s last seven night home games against Alabama, and the Tigers are 1-6 in them.
Alabama won in 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2024 in Death Valley after dark, several of them by a lot. The 2018 game was 29-0. The 2020 game was 55-17. LSU’s only win in that stretch was 32-31 in 2022.
Meanwhile, the two most recent afternoon meetings in the series both went LSU’s way, 24-21 in Baton Rouge in 2010 and 46-41 in Tuscaloosa in 2019. So Kiffin is fighting to protect a time slot in which his program has been getting beaten for a decade and a half, and complaining about one it has actually won in.
The “Last Four Months” Is Doing a Lot of Work
Kiffin did not explain the Mars line, and he did not have to. LSU and the conference have been in a legal dispute since late summer over the school’s attempt to put two players on its roster, a case in which Kiffin is a named defendant. It has not been resolved. In basketball, the league denied RJ Luis Jr. eligibility and a Louisiana judge has since intervened.
None of that proves anything about a kickoff time. It does explain why a first-year LSU coach assumes the worst when a schedule lands badly.
The SEC office has not responded to the remarks. Neither has commissioner Greg Sankey, Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer, or anyone in LSU’s administration.
Both Teams Are 6-2 and One of Them Is Done
LSU is 6-2 overall and 3-2 in the league, ranked 15th in the most recent AP poll after winning 38-17 at Auburn. Alabama is 6-2 and 4-2, ranked 10th. The loser gets a third loss with Playoff committee rankings still to come, and three-loss teams have not been faring well in a 12-team field.
Kiffin is not wrong that the slot is unusual. He is wrong about what it costs him. If LSU loses on November 7, the clock on the scoreboard will not be the reason.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
