Difference Between Curt Cignetti and Lane Kiffin | Don’t @ Dan Dakich and Me
After Lane Kiffin made some light-hearted jabs at college football fans on Twitter over the weekend, Dunn offered a reality check on coaching styles. He highlighted that Curt Cignetti seems to be fully engaged in coaching, while Kiffin appears, at least from the outside, to be spending significant time online rather than focusing on his team, which isn’t ideal.
SEC Decides to Move Away from “Cupcakes”
MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. – After years of what many fans dubbed “cupcake” games at the end of college football seasons, the SEC has finally decided to shake things up this November.
If you’re into college football, you probably know what I mean when I refer to those matchups that happen just before the final weekend of the SEC regular season.
These games have often featured SEC teams facing off against lower-tier FBS or FCS opponents—like Alabama against UT-Chattanooga on November 21, 2026.
Honestly, many of these matchups felt like “off weeks,” where fans anticipated seeing starters exit the game by halftime.
It’s the fans who end up feeling the pinch, as they pay high prices to attend these lackluster games just ahead of “Rivals Weekend.” It seems a bit unfair when you think they might expect to pay less for a more thrilling experience.
“This is the end of cupcake weekend, but we never had a sponsor for that weekend,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey joked on Tuesday night.
Now that the SEC is moving from an eight-game to a nine-game conference schedule, they hope to capitalize on this new format.
Steering clear of these types of late-season games is a nice way for the conferences to show some love to their fans. ESPN, as the media rights holder, is definitely glad to see the SEC making this change.
“The recognition is that this is nine conference games, and the weekend crowd is growing,” Sankey mentioned. “You can’t really have odd open days or non-conference dates later in the season without causing a chain reaction that pushes games forward. We encountered that in the ’26 season.”
SEC Takes a Page from the Big Ten’s Playbook
Known as “buying the game,” this late-season weekend has often allowed schools to secure additional wins to qualify for bowl games or boost their athletic department budgets. They do this by paying lower-tier teams to come play.
Now, with the SEC’s new approach, it seems they are catching up with the Big Ten, which has also avoided diluting this November weekend with uninspiring matchups that leave season ticket holders feeling shortchanged.
Unfortunately, adjustments to the nine-game conference schedule have led some SEC teams to cancel upcoming games against Power 4 opponents—South Carolina and North Carolina have recently called off their home-and-home series.
Other schools are seeing extra conference games as an opportunity to reschedule, and there’s still hope for maintaining high-profile matchups.
Next season, we can look forward to contests like Ohio State vs. Texas and Oklahoma vs. Michigan, along with Alabama vs. Florida State, to name a few.
As far as “cupcake” games in late November go? Those days are numbered now. It feels like it’s about time, really.
