By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
If any college football program should really hate Lane Kiffin, it’s Auburn, which hosts the LSU football coach and his Tigers in a Separation Saturday duel at 11 a.m. on ABC in Jordan-Hare Stadium.
No. 18 LSU (5-2, 2-2 Southeastern Conference) and Auburn (4-2, 2-2 SEC) each need a win to stay in College Football Playoff contention. The losing team would still have a chance, but a slim one.
Yes, Ole Miss and Tennessee really hate Kiffin, because he left those programs as its head coach. And fan bases, with fan being short for fanatic, never can understand why anyone would ever want to leave their beloved football factory – even coaches who have no previous connection with the program whatsoever. They totally forget Manifest Destiny and the American thing to do – move for perceived better opportunities.
Kiffin was at Ole Miss for more than half a decade – a career in coaching dog years – and turned around its Ole Mostly Mediocre program for decades as if Johnny Vaught was back in Oxford without the toupe. But Rebel fans treated him last month like he pulled a William Sherman on his way out and burned down the town. Okay, he did leave last year for LSU, which Ole Miss hates like it’s the Union Army, and Sherman was a former LSU president before the Civil War. But Kiffin was there for six years and authored one of the greatest runs in program history.
Tennessee still hates Kiffin, even though it has been since 2009 that he was its coach. Yes, he left after just one season, but it was a good season (7-6, 4-4), compared to what Tennessee had the year before under Phillip Fulmer and the next four after him under the likes of Derek Dooley and Butch Jones. And he left for what he thought was his dream job at USC, where he was an assistant for six seasons in a state where he went to college (Fresno State) and got his first head coaching job (Oakland Raiders). He goes back to Tennessee for the second time this Nov. 21. They threw golf balls and other objects at him last time in 2021 when he won 31-26.
But at least he accepted jobs at Ole Miss and Tennessee.
On Saturday, Kiffin returns to Auburn for the first time after he turned down the head coaching job there after the 2022 season. Yes, he dumped Tennessee and Ole Miss for more attractive partners, but at least he dated them. He didn’t even want to go out with Auburn. That’s the school that really should be pissed, particularly after it had to settle for the lesser Hugh Freeze, who played a lot of golf and went 6-7 and 3-5, 5-7 and 2-6 and 4-5 and 1-5 before getting fired last year.
So, what is in store for Kiffin at Jordan-Hare?
LSU and Auburn will play for the first time since 2023 and first time in Jordan-Hare since 2022. LSU won both of those. Auburn beat LSU in 2021 in Baton Rouge and by 48-11 at Auburn in 2020. Kiffin will coach at Auburn for the first time since 2023 when he could’ve been Auburn’s coach, but instead he beat Auburn as Ole Miss’ coach, 28-21.
Auburn fans would like nothing better than to have first-year coach Alex Golesh – Auburn’s seventh since 2020, counting all interims – show Kiffin what he could have had. Tossed golf balls on fire may be an idea. That would fit in to this rivalry.
Here’s a quick review of the wild LSU-Auburn earth shaking, fire breaking history.
OCTOBER 8, 1988, “THE EARTHQUAKE GAME,” BATON ROUGE – Unranked LSU upsets No. 4 Auburn, 7-6, on a 10-yard touchdown pass from Tommy Hodson to running back Eddie Fuller deep in the back of the end zone with 1:41 to go. The LSU Geology Department recorded an actual earthquake from the crowd noise in Tiger Stadium at the precise moment Fuller caught the TD. Auburn didn’t lose another regular season game and finished 10-1 and 6-1 in the SEC to share the league crown with LSU. With a win over LSU, Auburn may have had a shot at a national championship. I was working desk that night at the Alexandria Daily Town Talk, and the entire crew – writers, editors, photographers, pressmen, composing room workers, maintenance men – crowded around a TV in the sports department. And they almost all jumped for joy at the exact same time as if choreographed when Fuller, from nearby Leesville, made the catch just after dropping a TD in the same spot.
SEPT 17, 1994, “THE INTERCEPTION GAME,” AUBURN – LSU quarterback Jamie Howard threw five interceptions in the fourth quarter, which is hard to do, and No. 11 Auburn returned three for touchdowns for a 30-26 win in the early, Jefferson-Pilot TV game. But more amazing was that LSU offensive coordinator Lynn Amedee kept calling pass plays, and head coach Curley Hallman kept letting him. Had unranked LSU just took a knee at several points in the fourth quarter instead of passing, it wins. I was covering Alabama at the time for the Mobile Press-Register and watching from the pressbox of Bama’s 2:30 p.m. game at Arkansas. The TV was muted, as usual in pressboxes, so I and others at first thought each interception return was a replay of the previous one.
SEPT. 21, 1996, “THE FIRE GAME,” AUBURN – LSU tailgaters accidentally did not completely extinguish a portable barbecue pit that they set up a little too close to the aged, wooden Auburn Sports Arena, which was known as “The Barn” and located right next to Jordan-Hare. And early in the game, there was a “Barn Burning,” not to be confused with William Faulkner’s short story of the same name that won the 1939 O. Henry Award. ESPN captured the towering, cinematic flames as if it was a disaster movie. From the pressbox and on TV, it looked like the far corner of Jordan-Hare was on fire or about to be. I was covering Auburn at the time for the Mobile Press-Register and messaged the copydesk that fellow writer Ted Miller had been dispatched to the fire for the story by our attending sports editor, who was a huge Alabama fan and naturally a prerequisite Auburn hater. He had nearly been tossed from Auburn’s pressbox in the past for cheering for Bama. So, the desk messaged back, asking where our sports editor was, as he was now the lead arson suspect. With a change in wind direction, though, all this would not have been funny as there could have been a real disaster worse than Auburn’s offense. No. 21 LSU beat No. 14 Auburn, 19-15.
OCT. 20, 2007, “THE INVISIBLE MAN GAME,” BATON ROUGE – LSU coach Les Miles lost track of time, which he tended to do, and nearly let the clock run out with No. 5 LSU trailing No. 18 Auburn, 24-23, in the final seconds. On third-and-seven at the Auburn 22-yard line with mere seconds remaining, LSU quarterback Matt Flynn nearly got sacked, which would have ended the game with an LSU defeat as time would have likely elapsed after the Tigers did not attempt a 39-yard, game-winning field goal. And Miles would have been the laughingstock of the nation. But running game Jacob Hester made a game-saving block to protect Flynn, who found wide receiver Demetrius Byrd in the end zone for a 22-yard touchdown with :01 remaining. Byrd flashed his hand back and forth in front of his face after making his catch, which was something he often did, as if to say, “Can’t See Me,” because he’s so open. Had Byrd dropped the pass or had it been deflected, time likely would have elapsed, and Auburn would’ve won 24-23.
“We almost let the clock run out right there without kicking a field goal,” dazed and dumbfounded LSU defensive coordinator Bo Pelini said as he walked off the field like a zombie.
OCT. 14, 2017, “THE COMEBACK GAME,” BATON ROUGE – Unranked LSU appeared destined for its second straight home loss after falling behind 20-0 in the second quarter to No. 10 Auburn, and this was after an embarrassing, 24-21 home loss at home to three-touchdown underdog Troy two weeks prior. Coach Ed Orgeron was in trouble. LSU edged Florida, 17-16, on the road the week before Auburn, but Tiger fans were restless while trailing, 23-14, at the half. So much so that Les Miles, who was fired early in the previous season as LSU’s coach, drew a huge ovation from Tiger Stadium when he came out at halftime with 2007 players to be honored on the 10-year anniversary of their national championship. The Tigers came back to win 27-23, and Orgeron survived Troy by finishing 9-4 and 6-2.
SEPT. 15, 2018, “THE BIRTH OF BURROW GAME,” AUBURN – New LSU quarterback Joe Burrow, a junior transfer from Ohio State, wasn’t Joe Burrow quite yet in his first season as the Tigers’ quarterback. But he foreshadowed his spectacular, 2019 Heisman Trophy national championship season in the final moments of this one with No. 7 Auburn leading 21-13. Burrow found wide receiver Derrick Dillon for a 71-yard touchdown to get the 12th-ranked Tigers within 21-19 in the fourth quarter. Then he went all Joe Montana in driving LSU 52 yards in 14 plays to set up a 42-yard field goal by Cole Tracy as time expired for a 22-21 win. It was LSU’s first-ever win with a field goal on the last play of regulation. And LSU finally had a real quarterback.
OCT. 24, 2026, ONE FOR THE ROAD GAME, AUBURN – The Tigers finally break their 0-for-8 run on SEC road trips, going back to 2024 and including an 0-for-2 start for new coach Lane Kiffin. Quarterback Sam Leavitt feasts on Auburn’s pass defense, which is 96th in the nation and 10th in the SEC with 228 yards allowed a game. In a 27-21 loss, Auburn has no answer for LSU’s 6-foot-7 tight end Trey’ez Green, who returns to action after injuring his knee at Ole Miss on Sept. 19. Leavitt completes 22 of 26 passes for 255 yards and three touchdowns, including two to Green, who catches eight for 102 yards.
Kiffin is so excited he starts tweeting again and finally stops talking about the loss at Kentucky.
Be the first to comment