A brush, two paint rollers and a plastic Sherwin-Williams bag sat in the middle of the floor.
Non-adhesive masking paper protected the purple carpet from paint stains, and blue painter’s tape held the beige paper in place. An unmistakable scent of fresh paint filled the air.
The visiting locker room at Tiger Stadium — just days before LSU’s matchup against Mississippi State on Saturday (11 a.m., ESPN) — was undergoing a Barbie-styled makeover. Lane Kiffin was transforming these cramped quarters into a pink wonderland.
The walls. The lockers. Everything but the bathroom, ceiling and floor was turning into Regina George’s Wednesday outfit in the movie ‘Mean Girls.’
Pink.
“I told you guys when I got here,” Kiffin said in August. “My job is not for other schools, other people, media or any of that. My job is for the people that hired me, what they want me to do and the players in this room.”
When Mississippi State walks into the visiting locker room on Saturday, it’ll be the first team to witness the entire dressing room doused in pink. The walls were painted pink before LSU’s Week 4 matchup with Texas A&M, but this weekend the lockers themselves will wear the color for the first time.
Kiffin isn’t the first coach to use the pink visiting-locker-room trick. Iowa first came up with the idea in 1979, when then-coach Hayden Fry started a tradition that still stands today. Colorado State also colored its visiting locker room pink in the 1980s.
Kiffin painted the visiting changing room in Oxford that color after reading what Iowa had done and learning from a study on how colors could affect the mind “before a competitive match.” He didn’t specify which study he read, but the idea that color can affect a person’s mood, behavior or physiology isn’t far-fetched, at least according to Alaina Bruce, a licensed interior designer at Ritter Maher Architects.
“You can look at the tone of color and the intensity of color,” Bruce said, “and then when you put that into a built environment, which is what I do every day, then you really can control an emotional response. Which is crazy to think about.”
Blues and greens, for example, are frequently used in healthcare buildings because they create calming atmospheres that correlate with nature. Food brands often use red in their logos, since studies show the color triggers hunger.
Painting of the visitors locker room wraps up on Wednesday, October 14, 2026 in Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Staff photo by Michael Johnson
STAFF PHOTO BY MICHAEL JOHNSON
Bruce doesn’t use pink often in her line of work, though she says it’s become trendy lately to paint certain spaces pink, like a reception room or bathroom. But since pink, depending on the shade, is typically a calming color, Bruce believes it could affect an athlete’s aggression before a game.
“There’s a science to back it up that (softer colors) lower blood pressure, heart rate, all of these things,” Bruce said. “And when you put this non-traditional color in a locker room or (use it in) a non-traditional application, the goal is to create an uncomfortable setting for the opposing team.”
At least one study also suggests Bruce’s theory may be sound.
In 1979, psychologist Alexander Schauss convinced the U.S. Naval Correctional Center in Seattle to paint one of its seclusion rooms pink in order to test whether a specific shade of the color — Baker-Miller Pink, named after the officers who allowed Schauss to conduct the study — could reduce aggression in inmates.
After a 156-day period in which inmates’ assault rates were tracked before and after they’d been placed in the pink cell, Schauss found that their aggression was consistently reduced after spending time in the room.
“Confinees only required a maximum of 15 minutes of exposure (in the pink room) to ensure that the potential for violent or aggressive behavior had been reduced,” Schauss wrote. “Further, it was surprisingly discovered that the effects of color linger on for at least another 30 minutes after removal from the cell.”
Schauss’ findings gained popularity in Switzerland, where 30 jail cells — as of 2013 — had been painted pink to reduce inmates’ aggression. The country also has four police drunk tanks that are colored pink, specifically in the town of Bienne.
“It really seems to work,” a police spokesperson told The Telegraph in 2013. “They quieted down and go to sleep much more quickly in a pink room.”
Painting of the visitors locker room wraps up on Wednesday, October 14, 2026 in Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Staff photo by Michael Johnson
STAFF PHOTO BY MICHAEL JOHNSON
Whether LSU can put its foes to sleep in its own pink room remains to be fully tested, but the football findings from this colorful experiment across the country are promising.
LSU is 2-0 and outscoring opponents — Texas A&M and McNeese State — 98-20 since implementing the pink visiting locker room. Ole Miss is 17-1 at home since the start of the 2024 season and has won 14 straight games in Oxford. Iowa’s home record since 1979 is 207-89-3.
Against LSU, Texas A&M missed 14 tackles, and McNeese State missed 14 more, according to Pro Football Focus. A reduced sense of aggression could have contributed to those mistakes, but not all Southeastern Conference coaches are convinced.
“I don’t know if it’s the color of the locker room,” Ole Miss coach Pete Golding said, “as it is; you’ve got to go on the road, and you got to fight the crowd.”
Besides Golding, other SEC coaches also downplayed the potential adverse effects of getting ready for a game in a visiting locker room, regardless of its color. They said SEC changing rooms are typically nicer than those in lower-level conferences, and that other external factors like the crowd and travel make road games harder.
Georgia coach Kirby Smart, when he was a Division II coach, rode an 18-hour bus to Arkadelphia, Arkansas, just to play in a stadium without a visiting locker room. “We just sat out on the field like high school teams,” he said.
Florida coach Jon Sumrall also wouldn’t complain about the visiting locker-room amenities in the SEC.
“As long as there’s a toilet in each one of them,” Sumrall said, “we’ve got a chance.”
Painting of the visitors locker room wraps up on Wednesday, October 14, 2026 in Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Staff photo by Michael Johnson
STAFF PHOTO BY MICHAEL JOHNSON
Coaches may be unsure how a visiting locker room affects their teams’ road performance, but Golding appreciates Ole Miss’s pink locker room and acknowledges the studies suggesting that color affects mood.
“That was kind of like that when I got here,” Golding said regarding the locker room, “but we’ll take any advantage we can get.”
For Kiffin, that’s the name of the game: constantly searching for an advantage, any leg up on the competition. Whether it’s trying to roster NFL rookies after they were cut in training camp, inviting the band to a preseason scrimmage to prepare for the home opener or painting the visiting locker room pink, LSU’s new coach has stopped at nothing to gain an edge.
Even if it’s ripped straight from Elle Woods’ closet in the film ‘Legally Blonde.’
“I think we did it two years ago (at Ole Miss) and we never lost a home game, and we haven’t lost a home game since,” Kiffin said. “Maybe it works.”