Lane Kiffin used Auburn’s October upset of Georgia to make a broader point about how college football works in the NIL era.
Ahead of LSU’s matchup with Texas at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge on Saturday, Kiffin was asked whether his team would keep responding well after losses. LSU has outscored opponents 66-6 in games following a defeat this season, and Kiffin pointed to how quickly teams can flip from one week to the next.
“But I think you see that a lot in sports, especially in football this year. We kind of used to be old-school.
You'd want the team you're playing the following week to lose because you'd say, 'Oh man, then they're down and they got problems and everything.' I kind of think the other way nowadays,” Kiffin said this week ahead of his team’s tussle with Texas at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge on Saturday.
He added, “Just like we were happy when Auburn beat Georgia, I don't know what has changed with kids nowadays, but I think a lot of times you're seeing teams actually rebound much better than they handle success. You see a lot of these games that don't make sense to you on paper if you look at the week before.”
The way Kiffin framed it, Auburn’s win over Georgia was less about one isolated Saturday and more about how unpredictable the sport has become. Georgia had just beaten Alabama the week before, then turned around and lost to Auburn in the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry.
Auburn, meanwhile, came into that game off a loss to Tennessee and a bye week before pulling off the biggest SEC upset of the season in Athens. The very next week, Kiffin’s team went to Jordan-Hare Stadium and handled Auburn in lopsided fashion.
Weeks later, that 27-24 win at Sanford Stadium is still the kind of result people keep circling back to. After Georgia’s dominant showing against Ole Miss this past weekend, Auburn’s victory looks even more startling in hindsight.
That’s the kind of result that gives college football its charm, and it’s also why Auburn’s season still has that one signature moment. A winless October would have been disastrous, but beating Georgia changed the feel of the year on the Plains.
Kiffin likely brought up the upset knowing full well people would remember what Auburn did next. Even so, the win over Georgia remains the kind of result that makes a season feel different.
“Any Given Saturday” is actually a true statement sometimes. It was on October 17, 2026, and we'll always remember how true it was that day.
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