Lane Kiffin created a psychological advantage to sedate opponents while at Ole Miss. He will now be forced to sit in the same visitor’s locker room that he previously painted pink on Saturday during his return to Oxford with LSU.
Don’t fall asleep!
The unique color is based on a study from the 1960s. It was brought to college football in the late 1970s.
Lane Kiffin will return to Oxford as the head coach at LSU.
Lane Kiffin was not unfamiliar with Oxford, Mississippi when he was hired as the head coach at Ole Miss in 2019. He had previously served as the head coach at Tennessee and the offensive coordinator at Alabama.
However, Kiffin was always relegated to the visitor’s locker room. The last six seasons were different. As the head coach of the Rebels, he got to spend his Saturdays in the home locker room. It is a state-of-the-art facility that underwent a renovation in 2023.
Now, after a messy breakup in November, Kiffin will return to the visitor’s locker room at Ole Miss as the new head coach at LSU. Even though he is familiar with the facilities at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, he will be on the other side of the building.
That means he must deal with a psychological disadvantage that he accidentally created for his future self…
The visitor’s locker room at Ole Miss is pink.
LSU arrived to Oxford on Friday. The Tigers equipment staff got the visitor’s locker room all set up for the players.
It is small. It is crammed. There are no modern amenities. And, as you can see, the walls are painted pink.
That was actually Kiffin’s idea. Well, it happened during Kiffin’s tenure at Ole Miss.
The Rebels repainted the visitor’s locker room at some point in the last six years. The color is intentional!
Iowa Hawkeyes football coach Hayden Fry was the brainchild of the pink locker room. Fry originally graduated from Baylor University with a degree in psychology before he got into coaching.
He, at some point, read a study about the color pink and its calming effect.
Thus, upon arrival to campus in 1979, Fry painted the visitor’s locker room at Kinnick Stadium with a specific shade of pink. Baker-Miller Pink is also known as P-618, Schauss pink or drunk tank pink.
This very specific shade of pink, with the hex code #FF91AF, was studied extensively in the late 1960s. The studies prove that Baker-Miller Pink temporarily reduces hostile, violent and/or aggressive behavior.
Alexander Schauss found that by merely staring at an index card printed with this P-618 color results in a “marked effect on lowering the heart rate, pulse and respiration as compared to other colors.” That is especially true before and after exercise.
Schauss later convinced a correctional facility to paint the interior of its confinement cells with this specific shade of pink. Erratic and hostile behavior instantly plummeted after just 15 minutes of exposure.
Fry took that proven science to college football and to the visitor’s locker room at Kinnick Stadium. Lane Kiffin took that proven science to the visitor’s locker room at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. Now he must sit in the Baker-Miller Pink room at his old stadium.