Outside of the game of football itself, one of the most talked about aspects of a game day in the college realm is the time of the opening kick.
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Recently, the SEC began sending out estimated game time windows for all of its games before the season commenced, giving both teams and fans a chance to plan properly with their travel schedules, routines and other things.
In 2026, one part of the schedule stuck out for the Auburn Tigers, that being that the Tigers had four consecutive games in the “early window,” meaning the kickoff time would be set for 11 a.m., 11:45 a.m. or noon CST.
That stretch began last week, when Auburn took on LSU in Jordan-Hare Stadium and lost 38-17, a score that was more drastic than many expected.
The Tigers now head to Oxford, Mississippi to take on the Ole Miss Rebels in Vaught Hemingway Stadium, a game that will begin at 11:45 a.m. on Saturday.
As a result of last week’s performance, the question arose as to what went wrong with the team and if the early kick had anything to do with it.
Head Coach Alex Golesh went and studied the routine that the team did, trying to find any possible shortcomings that could have happened.
“I went back and dissected down literally everything from Thursday to kickoff last week,” Golesh said. “Man, like, where were we off? Like, that's the thing that I think maybe puzzled me as much as anything, because I thought leading up to kickoff, energy was really good. Intent was really good.”
When Golesh went through the whole schedule, he said that he tried to keep the meetings and walkthroughs as close as he possibly could while letting the players sleep in as long as they could, ensuring they would get proper rest.
When it comes to this week’s game though, there is a new wrinkle thrown in things—travel. The head coach said the team will change some of its Saturday morning routine when it comes to the meetings, but outside of that, Auburn has to be ready to go compete.
“Anytime there's another variable, it changes process,” Golesh said. “And I'm so process driven and I've forced our guys to be so process driven, it's like, man, there is a little bit of adjustment that’s gotta happen and we just gotta be able to go handle it. So change a little bit of the pre pregame meal piece. Man, I guess we'll see, because the other variable is the opponent, so that's also part of it.”
The one thing Golesh does fully understand though is that in the game against LSU, the performance could not just be pinned on one area, but it was instead a multitude of them.
At the end of the day though, the message to the team is simple for the game to come.
“These guys know, like they know individually like, man, if I wasn't at my best Saturday morning last week, let's rewind it back and figure out why,” Golesh said. “We gotta go play better football than we did last Saturday. And like honestly, if we're just being real real, like go play better football than we did Saturday. Go coach better than we did Saturday, and that's what's gonna flip the script.”
Since 2016, the Tigers are 7-4 in “early” games on the road. The last time Auburn played in Oxford was one of those games, in which it lost in 2022.
Auburn Undercover is an independent Auburn sports media company covering Auburn athletics, recruiting and insider news.
