Lane Kiffin says he's 'sad' about changes to LSU-Alabama rivalry, tells LSU fans to 'start drinking' early

One of the many side effects of conference realignment and the advent of the College Football Playoff has been the decline of importance placed on traditional rivalries.

An obvious example of this is the pause currently underway of the "Greatest Intersectional Rivalry" in college sports, the long-standing game between the USC Trojans and Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Both schools had some clear reasons for declining to schedule each other in 2027, with SC now in the Big Ten Conference, and sure enough, the rivalry won't be played until 2030 at the earliest.

But even within conferences, the supersized alignment and desire to align all teams around a nine-game schedule has created necessary changes. Even with one of the sport's best rivalries in recent seasons: the Alabama Crimson Tide vs. the LSU Tigers.

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This weekend, the two teams meet in Baton Rouge, with tremendous College Football Playoff implications. Both teams enter at 6-2, and while it's possible, if not likely, that a three-loss team gets serious consideration for a spot in the tournament, the losing side won't feel great about their chances to recover.

It's a huge game for this year's postseason. And it's also the last of 63 consecutive seasons where Alabama and LSU have faced off.

The Tide and Tigers will play again in 2028, but the current format of the SEC's future schedules means they won't play each other every year moving forward. LSU head coach Lane Kiffin isn't a fan of that arrangement, blaming the influence of "money" in the sport for the change in tradition.

"I think that's just sad," Kiffin said. "And I understand, so I'm not being critical. All the decisions, usually, I think all of them probably really come down to money, whether that's the realignments, whether that's the rivalries. So, I think it's all sad in general in the big picture of things that money drives to make [changes to] such great traditions and rivalries.

"And there's really good things that have changed in college football over the years, but there's also a lot that I think myself and a lot of people wish that they were the way that they were, rivalries and conferences the same. And so unfortunately it's where we are that really doesn't seem like much is going to be protected when it comes to TV contracts and money and other people's ideas."

Kiffin's right; money is the driving factor in all college football decisions these days, and many traditional aspects of the sport have, and will be, upended as administrators and officials look to find every last available dollar. Like some coaches who say, bolt a job after having some success for a bigger payday at another school. But it's an unavoidable consequence of push to standardize scheduling as much as possible.

Speaking of scheduling, while Kiffin was right to lament the changes to the rivalry, he was a bit, uh, forgetful, when talking about t