Matthew Hinton-Imagn Images
By Hunt Palmer
Spring football ended over the weekend. Men’s basketball has one player rostered, and baseball has lost nine SEC games in a row.
Before long, all eyes in Baton Rouge will be on Clemson.
Campus will be buzzing in the blistering Labor Day Weekend heat, and the Lane Kiffin era will begin with the most anticipated home season opener in decades.
Tiger fans should enjoy it, because I have doubts as to whether or not another like it is on the horizon. Kiffin has made it clear in his first five months on the job that he’s taking scheduling very seriously. That may not mean attracting the sport’s biggest brands to Baton Rouge.
“I saw the thing somebody sent me where you got teams playing their entire conference schedule and play like five to nine draft picks on the whole schedule,” Kiffin said. “We play that in one game. So, that’s a big difference. I know it’s been a topic discussion why they need to figure out how to change the value of schedule and how much that means.”
Kiffin’s assertion, generally, is that an SEC 10-2 should not be seen as equal to an ACC or Big 12 10-2. Quality of wins and losses should be weighted more heavily than simply, what’s your record? His point is reasonable, although Alabama (10-3) did get into the College Football Playoff last season with more losses than Notre Dame (10-2). The Irish’s schedule was weak, and they lost two of their three high profile game. Alabama’s third loss came in the SEC Championship Game. It’s not apples to apples, but Alabama did have more losses.
The more apt example may have been Texas which took a first-year starting quarterback on the road and lost a seven-point game to Ohio State. The Buckeyes finished the season 12-0 and were among the best teams in the country. Texas could have beaten Texas State 67-7 that weekend and finished 10-2. Instead, they finished 9-3 and three spots out of the College Football Playoff despite wins at No. 7 Texas A&M, against No. 8 Oklahoma in a neutral site and over No. 14 Vanderbilt.
“I joke, and I say you and I are pickle ball partners or tennis, whatever it is. We can schedule in this room of all these teams and pick those teams over there and we can go 12-0,” Kiffin said. “We’re the same team. We go play (other teams) and play the same games, we might be eight and four. So, it’s just our sport hasn’t figured that out, and I feel like basketball has.”
Programs have less control over scheduling than ever entering this season because the SEC has mandated a ninth league game. That only leaves three for schools to schedule on their own. One of those was required to be a Power Four team.
In his final four seasons at Ole Miss, Kiffin scheduled Washington State, Wake Forest and Georgia Tech to meet the requirement.
Washington State had been abandoned by its PAC-12 members and left for dead. They’d posted one 10-win season in 21 years and were 20-28 in the three years leading up to the 2025 matchup with the Rebels. Wake Forest had one 10-win season in 19 years and was coming off a 4-8 season. Georgia Tech had one 10-win season in 16 years prior to its home-and-home with Ole Miss and was coming off three straight three-win seasons.
Scheduling is uncertain. Because it’s done years out, you never truly know how a team’s roster is going to shake out in a certain season. Those three were pretty safe bets not to be very good. Kiffin’s Rebels won the four games by a combined score of 154-50.
Prior to last year, Clemson had won 10 games in 13 of 14 seasons.
“That just seems so far away from me from a work standpoint of how much we do every day,” Kiffin said of the opener. “Really cool in that way to have an exciting premier program to open with at home. Not being on the road, you know, for a first game, that’s exciting. Having never coached in here on the home side, like many of our coaches, so that’s exciting. But that’s a long way to go, and obviously a premier program and Dabo’s won as much as anybody in college football and probably more than anybody active.”
Among active coaches, only Kirk Ferentz at Iowa has won more games than Dabo Swinney, and only Kirby Smart has a higher winning percentage. Clemson’s brand is near the top of college football.
To boil it down a little more simply than a hypothetical pickle ball schedule. Kiffin sees the SEC schedule as a 100m hurdles race. It happens quickly, and there are plenty of obstacles. He’s not interested in adding an additional hurdle like Penn State, Miami or Michigan when Boston College and Rutgers are options. Ole Miss, Texas A&M, Alabama, Texas and Tennessee provide a big enough challenge in Kiffin’s eyes.
Plenty of Tiger fans will disagree with the philosophy. They’ll claim iron sharpens iron and to be the man you have to beat the man and some variation of we’re not scared. It’s admirable, but the crew in Kiffin’s corner will disagree. I happen to lean that way. No resolution will come between the two parties.
One thing they’ll have to do is understand a non-conference scene like we’ll see when Clemson comes to Baton Rouge is unlikely to happen again while Kiffin is in charge.
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