CLEMSON — Danny Ford is very familiar with Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, La.

The former Clemson head coach played there twice as a player at Alabama and later coached there when he was an assistant at Alabama and the head coach at Arkansas. Ford’s teams were a combined 4-3 in the seven games he experienced in Baton Rouge.

With Clemson coming off a 7-6 season in 2025, its worst under head coach Dabo Swinney in 15 years, Ford said the Tigers’ Week 1 trip to LSU makes this game even more important.

“This year is important, but this first ballgame in Baton Rouge, with a quarterback that has never started, man, you are asking a lot from anybody,” Ford said recently on the Sports Talk Radio Network. “I have played football in Baton Rouge as a player. I have coached there as a coach, and it is whole different between nighttime and daytime in Baton Rouge.”

LSU wins roughly 79 percent of its games at Tiger Stadium during night games, while it has just a 55-win percentage there in day games. Clemson travels to Tiger Stadium on Sept. 5. Kickoff is set for 7:30 p.m., on ABC.

It is also going to be LSU’s first game with Lane Kiffin as its head coach.

“He is going to try to show out on TV and run it up on (Swinney) all he can to run it up and beat him all he can beat him,” Ford said. “How good are they going to be? I do not know, they got a lot of transfers.”

The good news for Clemson is that Swinney is very familiar with Baton Rouge, as well. Swinney played and coached there during his time at Alabama from 1990-2000. Those teams were 5-1 in Baton Rouge with Swinney.

“Whew! It is going to be a telling story, but you will learn a lot from that first football game,” Ford said. “So, instead of predicting how they are going to do, I am going to wait until September.”