Bruce Pearl once told Lane Kiffin Jordan-Hare Stadium was haunted. What the LSU coach thinks

BATON ROUGE – Lane Kiffin isn’t sold.

But if you ask Nick Saban, one of Kiffin’s coaching mentors, or other coaches or experts have voiced it — there’s even been stories written about it recently. Strange things happen inside Jordan-Hare Stadium, Auburn‘s home football field.

Some, like Saban, go as far to say, the place is haunted. Kiffin, the first-year LSU football coach, isn’t on the “Jordan-Hare Stadium is haunted” bandwagon, but he has another word that he uses to describe the venue.

“I don’t think it’s haunted, but there’s some magical stuff that happens in there,” Kiffin told reporters during his weekly press conference Monday, Oct. 19 ahead of his team’s road trip to face Auburn this weekend.

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The Kick-Six, the Prayer at Jordan-Hare and odd Les Miles clock management moments are the tip of the iceberg of the spooks that have played out inside Auburn’s stadium over the years. It’s known to be one of the harder places to win a football game, regardless of if Auburn is ranked and playing well or not.

Records don’t mean anything inside Jordan-Hare.

Kiffin has been on the opposing sideline three times there and his record is 2-1. The lone loss was in 2021 when he took his 6-1 Ole Miss team in there and faced a good, 5-2 Auburn team and ended up falling short, 31-20.

“A really electric place. Been there a lot and part of the Iron Bowl. It’s kind of a magical place,” Kiffin said. “We’re going to have to play really well and be ready to play in a really loud environment that they play well at.

“It’s always about preparation and preparing really well, practicing really well and then when you go in there, making less mistakes than a lot of the times on the road. As you breakdown your losses and close losses, they’re usually not as much about how many plays they make. It’s more the mistakes you make, and the penalties, more false starts and more turnovers than when you play at home.”

Kiffin was once courted by Auburn to take over the football program a few years back and then men’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl tried to sell him on how the place’s haunted factor leads to unexpected wins.

“When Auburn was trying to hire me, Bruce Pearl tried to tell me that it was. He’s like, ‘Hey, you’ll get a win every year that you really don’t deserve because magical things just happen here,’ Kiffin recalled, “‘it’s haunted.'”

Kiffin and his staff may likely have to bust some ghosts Saturday inside Jordan-Hare Stadium.

Cory Diaz covers the LSU Tigers for The Daily Advertiser as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow his Tigers coverage on Twitter: @ByCoryDiaz. Got questions regarding LSU athletics? Send them to Cory Diaz at bdiaz@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: Bruce Pearl once told Lane Kiffin Jordan-Hare Stadium was haunted. What the LSU coach thinks