LSU Tigers head coach Lane Kiffin dropped a quote this week that he shouldn’t have, and he’s going to regret it
Not really sure what LSU head coach Lane Kiffin was thinking with that one.
Lane Kiffin can fight against the expectations all he wants, but the reality is that he’s facing playoff-or-bust pressure in his first season at LSU. And that’s for a couple of reasons.
For one, he left Ole Miss in the middle of a College Football Playoff run to take the job in Baton Rouge. When you leave a team that’s already competing for a championship, it’s only going to increase the spotlight and the expectation that you can do the same at a school with even better resources. Especially in the transfer portal era when year one isn’t viewed the way it used to be anymore. You can instantly build a program from scratch and compete at a very high level.
The other reason the expectation is so high is simple: if you’re the head coach at LSU, you better win a championship. And even if you do win a championship, you still might get fired. Ask Les Miles and Ed Orgeron. And especially ask Brian Kelly what happens when you don’t win one. The expectation is clear.
I’m not saying Kiffin has to win a championship this season or he’ll face questions about his job security. I’m not even saying he’s going to face questions about his job security if he misses the playoff – that’s obviously not going to happen. But there will be quite a bit of noise if LSU isn’t at least in a position to reach the playoff this fall.
Lane Kiffin’s latest comments only add fuel to the fire
Earlier this offseason, Kiffin told On3 that it might be year two or year three before LSU breaks through.
“I know that this will show, for me, being the right decision,” said Kiffin. “It may not be this year because everybody’s going to want to compare the two places and everything like that. It’ll show in Year 2, 3. It’s going to show that we have the same systems, we have all this stuff and we brought it here, and combined it with the branding of LSU and the ability to sign elite high school (players). That will show. It may not be next year, but this wasn’t a one-year decision.”
That quote from May is why I’m a bit surprised by what Kiffin said this week when asked about his team.
After trying to kill some of the hype over the last few months, he told a reporter that he’s actually more pleased with this team right now than he typically is at this time of the year.
“I’m very pleased where our team is actually – which I’m normally not right now,” said Kiffin. “Obviously, we’ve got a lot of work to do. But no problems [with] players’ attitudes and [we’re] playing physical.”
I don’t know if that was a wise decision by Kiffin. If you’re trying to kill the hype and lower expectations just a little bit and quiet the noise, the last thing you should be saying is that you’re more pleased with this team than you normally are with your teams in the middle of August (especially considering his team last year at Ole Miss was a playoff team). That’s only going to increase the expectation that LSU goes out and puts itself in a strong position to be in the playoff conversation this fall.
A playoff spot can come down to a couple of plays. There are a lot of good teams that can tell you that. Texas and Vanderbilt, two programs that just missed out on playoff spots last season, but were clearly playoff-caliber teams, can tell you that. That’s why I personally don’t buy into the playoff-or-bust mentality in college football (but I don’t think most national analysts agree with me).
But if LSU is out of the playoff mix before the calendar turns to November, Kiffin is going to find out just how loud the noise can get.
