{"id":429306,"date":"2025-12-06T18:07:20","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T18:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/429306\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T18:07:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T18:07:20","slug":"lane-kiffin-tags-college-football-playoff-committee-following-caleb-downs-big-ten-sec-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/429306\/","title":{"rendered":"Lane Kiffin tags College Football Playoff committee following Caleb Downs Big Ten-SEC comments"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lane Kiffin<\/a><\/strong> made sure that the College Football Playoff committee saw Ohio State<\/a><\/strong> star Caleb Downs<\/a><\/strong>\u2018 recent comments<\/a><\/strong> about playing in the Big Ten vs. the SEC. The new LSU<\/a><\/strong> coach tagged the CFP account in a quote tweet on X ahead of conference championship\u2019s Saturday slate.<\/p>\n

Downs, who has played two seasons at Ohio State and one at Alabama<\/a><\/strong>, explained how the SEC was a bit more challenging on a weekly basis than what he\u2019s experienced playing for the Buckeyes in the Big Ten. Kiffin seems to agree with Downs\u2019 sentiment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would definitely say in the SEC, you\u2019re playing every week and you\u2019re playing like top (competition) every week,\u201d Downs said. \u201cThat was something when I was at Alabama, every week, like we\u2019ve got\u00a0Tennessee\u00a0this week,\u00a0LSU\u00a0next week, then we\u2019ve got\u00a0Auburn. You\u2019re playing dudes every week. That\u2019s something you prepare your body for, prepare your mind for. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn the Big Ten, you\u2019re going to have 4 or 5 games maybe where you\u2019re going to have to play high-level competition and be at your highest point. That\u2019s the difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

Downs\u2019 comments have since reignited the debate over which conference is superior heading into the postseason. The Big Ten has the top two teams in the country with undefeated No. 1 Ohio State and undefeated No. 2 Indiana. Meanwhile, the SEC has seven teams ranked in the latest CFP rankings, including five in the top 10.<\/p>\n

His comments were not to shade his current conference, as he did go on to praise the Big Ten for recent postseason efforts over the SEC. Of course, the Big Ten has won consecutive national championships between Michigan<\/a><\/strong> (2023-24) and Ohio State (2024-25). <\/p>\n

\u201cBut then again,\u201d Downs continued. \u201cI said that when I first got to Ohio State and then a lot of the teams that were in the Big Ten, when it came to bowl games, ended up beating the SEC teams (last season). So I feel like that kind of negated what I said.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since joining Ohio State, Downs has helped lead the Buckeyes to a 26-2 record, including a 12-0 start to 2025. His Buckeyes are set to compete for a Big Ten championship on Saturday night against the Hoosiers, with the winner of that game most likely receiving the No. 1 overall seed heading into the playoffs. <\/p>\n

For Kiffin, Ole Miss<\/a><\/strong> is most likely in the field of 12, but will not coach the Rebels after taking the LSU job. He led Ole Miss to an 11-1 regular season, the best record in school history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lane Kiffin made sure that the College Football Playoff committee saw Ohio State star Caleb Downs\u2018 recent comments…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":429307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[6846,1318,151573,1317,1315,1316,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-429306","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-caleb-downs-23-mill-creek","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-lane-kiffin-94-jefferson","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-football","13":"tag-ncaafootball","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115673959386138129","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}