Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin has a knack for finding his way into the headlines on a regular basis, and most of the time, it’s simply for the fact that he says what’s on his mind.
This week, Kiffin caused a stir after making it clear that he was not happy with LSU-Alabama getting the night game slot rather than Ole Miss-Georgia.
“So, who went at night? LSU gets to play at night again, I guess? Shocker,” Kiffin said at his press conference. “That’s two for two for them.”
While that comment alone really stopped spreading once it hit the edges of SEC country, another comment from the Rebels’ head coach is resonating around the country for another reason entirely.
In discussing the new College Football Playoff format, Kiffin said that it’s “odd” to him that the ACC and Big 12 are viewed as equals with the SEC and Big Ten, specifically with regard to their league champions getting a first-round bye.
“I said when (12-team playoffs) first came out, and everyone was excited that you’re going to have a lot of issues at the end when you’re going to have teams with byes that are ranked away below other teams, and you’re going to have teams ranked 11th or 12th in the country and they’re not going to get in over some lower ranked teams,” Kiffin said.
“Definitely a very odd system of the byes and the conferences since realignment has happened. There’s extremely big differences between these four conferences.”
Kiffin then supported his claims with the current look of the AP Top 25 poll, and how top heavy it is with SEC and Big Ten teams.
“These two conferences (SEC and Big Ten) have so many teams up there and so much discrepancy of what a schedule is like in these two conferences,” Kiffin said, “especially this conference versus the other two conferences (ACC and Big 12), how you’ve got to be ready every week in the SEC because there’s no easy games here.”
Do you agree with Kiffin? Should the Big Ten and SEC get more advantages in the postseason because their conference schedules are supposedly tougher than leagues like the ACC and Big 12? Let us know what you think in the HCS member forum!
