Nick Saban spent 17 years at Alabama watching coaches try to gain an inch wherever they could find one. So when LSU quarterback Sam Leavitt showed up on the SEC availability report this week, Saban knew exactly what he was looking at.
He said so on The Pat McAfee Show Friday, and he did not soften it.
“If I was a betting man, I would say there’s absolutely nothing wrong with Sam Leavitt,” Saban said. “So, I would be psychologically telling the defensive players that this doesn’t matter. I’m 100% expecting Sam Leavitt to play in this game.”
The Timeline Looks Suspicious
Leavitt landed on Wednesday’s report as doubtful, a designation the SEC defines as roughly a 25 percent chance of playing. By Thursday he had been upgraded to questionable. He did not throw Wednesday but participated in Thursday’s walkthrough.
Lane Kiffin never mentioned an injury during Monday’s news conference. He never mentioned one on his Thursday radio show either. A starting quarterback does not go from healthy enough to ignore to doubtful without somebody saying something, unless the silence is the point.
Ole Miss staff members told ESPN they were skeptical the original listing reflected reality. They are not alone.
Saban Knows Kiffin Better Than Anyone
This is what makes the take land. Kiffin worked under Saban at Alabama from 2014 through 2016 as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. Saban has seen how his former assistant thinks, how he needles opponents, how he enjoys the theater of all this.
Saturday night in Oxford is Kiffin’s first trip back to Ole Miss since he bolted for the LSU job right before the College Football Playoff in 2025. The emotional stakes are enormous. The competitive stakes are bigger. If there was ever a week to make a defensive coordinator burn two days of prep on a backup quarterback, this is it.
Conference rules do prohibit gamesmanship designed to hide a player’s true availability. The SEC can levy fines between $25,000 and $100,000, with additional measures possible against head coaches. That is a real deterrent on paper. It has never been much of one in practice, because proving intent is nearly impossible.
What Leavitt Actually Is
Leavitt transferred from Arizona State this offseason as one of the most coveted quarterbacks in the country, and the first two games have been uneven. He has 574 passing yards, two passing touchdowns and four interceptions, plus 135 rushing yards and five rushing scores across wins over Clemson and Louisiana Tech.
Against Louisiana Tech he threw three first-half interceptions and still finished with 366 total yards and four touchdowns. That is the whole player right now: dangerous, careless, capable of winning a game by himself in either direction.
If he sits, LSU turns to freshman Husan Longstreet or sophomore Landen Clark, who has attempted more passes this season.
The Verdict
Saban is right. Leavitt plays. The SEC will issue another report Friday night and a final update 90 minutes before kickoff, and by then the only people still treating this as a real medical question will be the ones who have not been paying attention.
Kiffin got a free news cycle out of it. That was probably the whole idea.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.