Lane Kiffin opens up on Ole Miss' success at night

Ole Miss has impressed so far this season, losing just one game to Alabama as they’re ranked No. 12 in the AP Top 25 poll ahead of their matchup Saturday night at Vanderbilt.

But what may be more impressive is head coach Lane Kiffin‘s road record in night games in the SEC, boating a 5-2 record since his arrival at Ole Miss. This was new news to Kiffin who was asked about his road record at night in conference play this week ahead of their showdown with the Commodores.

“Well I know a lot of analytics, I didn’t know that one, so thank you,” Kiffin said. “The SEC in general, I mean I know I actually looked this morning because I get a report about the home and road, and I don’t know this for other conferences. I think that the home and road thing in the SEC is bigger than any other conference.”

Many view the SEC as college football’s top conference in regard to talent and competition. But when it comes to hostile environments the Southeastern Conference may have that box checked as well.

“I think you have dramatically really hard places to play here, and here just like Saturday night, even Auburn having a down year. I mean that was an electric place and we got major cadence issues going on in the game that we can’t hear, and it didn’t help that someone behind our bench, one of the fans, had a whistle too,” Kiffin laughed off. “But I don’t know why we’ve had success at night, I mean it’s hard in this conference.”

Ole Miss was able to pull out the win over Auburn last weekend on the road at night in a closely contested battle. And although Kiffin isn’t quite sure why his team has thrived in those environments, he believes his uptempo offensive attack may play a role.

“I personally think even though we’ve had some false starts that tempo offense helps playing on the road in really loud places versus the old school huddle and cadence part,” Kiffin explained. “So I think it kind of makes it harder for fans to even know really when to be loud because you’re going so fast. Now, when you having some three and outs it works against you like it did in the [last] game.”

The ingredients of Rebel’s road game recipe for success under the bright lights may be hard to identify, but Kiffin knows that when teams visit them they want to return the favor of a hostile environment that they’ve received from other opposing crowds.

“So I don’t really know that, I just know it’s really big and that’s why I’m trying to encourage our fans so much to come out and be the same way they were in Arkansas and especially LSU. Because that’s what they want our players to do, they want our players to show up every week, or they don’t like that or complain about that,” Kiffin said. “So we’re hoping for the same thing from them.”

The Rebels will look to maintain their success this weekend in front of a Vanderbilt crowd that’s not exactly known for the hostility, as the two teams square off this Saturday at 7:30 p.m. ET in a game airing on SEC Network.