QB Transfer Portal Love Triangle: It’s all fun and games until Lane Kiffin inadvertently costs LSU three elite signal callers

The LSU quest for Lane Kiffin’s next starting quarterback has been a huge mess so far.

Ryan Roberts — National College Football Writer

Jan 9, 2026 11:28 AM EST

Dec 1, 2025; Baton Rouge, LA, USA; LSU new head coach Lane Kiffin speaks at South Stadium Club at Tiger Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Matthew Hinton-Imagn Images

Once Lane Kiffin was hired as the newest head coach of the LSU Tigers a few weeks ago, fans both local and national became incredibly excited about the future of the program. Kiffin, while not a flavor for everyone, is an entertaining personality who is one of the sharpest offensive minds in all of college football. With strong support around him, there’s no reason that he shouldn’t be able to get this LSU program back to prominence, which was lost most recently under former head coach Brian Kelly.

While there appears to be a substantial rebuild on the horizon for the Tigers, most would hope that Kiffin’s impact would be felt almost immediately on the offensive side of the football. Ever since former offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock left a couple of offseasons ago for Notre Dame, the offense has been trending downward, and quickly. The fanbase should be hoping for at least competence heading into the 2026 college football season. Anything more than that is a testament to the offensive genius that is Kiffin.

One of the main objectives for Kiffin is to quickly upgrade the quarterback position. With Garrett Nussmeier off to the NFL, and both Michael Van Buren and Colin Hurley transferring, you are going to have a completely new room of signal callers heading into 2026. You need everything from a starter to the depth that makes up that room. The former, however, is what everyone will be paying the most attention to.

Unless you have been living under a rock, LSU’s search for its starting quarterback has been a heavily discussed topic over the last several weeks. That conversation has centered around three extremely talented signal callers, and at one point, an odd love triangle that they created. It appears that Kiffin and the Tigers are going to walk out of all the chaos without a quarterback, which really does put a black eye on the process thus far.

Quarterback love triangle

Once upon a time, there was a really talented quarterback named Brendan Sorsby. The former Cincinnati signal caller entered the transfer portal and instantly became a hot commodity. While Sorsby navigated the portal landscape, he and his representation also kept their options open to potentially enter the 2026 NFL Draft depending on positive feedback. Very early on in the process, it appears that Texas Tech and Indiana were the two top schools to watch.

As the days went on, the Hoosiers began to fade and prioritize others, eventually signing Josh Hoover (TCU). Unless something changed, it felt like the Red Raiders were the most likely team to land Sorsby. Then LSU eventually threw its hat in the ring. Sam Leavitt (Arizona State) had been the player mentioned most with the Tigers, but it was clear that LSU was making a run at Sorsby. After some positive momentum, the Red Raiders did eventually win out. Texas Tech also had some interest in Leavitt, which made the dynamic interesting at the time.

Before Kiffin and Co. took their best shot with Sorsby, things had been in a pretty good spot with Leavitt. While the Sorsby stuff was happening, Leavitt was forced to continue figuring out his best options out there. Kentucky and new head coach Will Stein began gaining some traction in the Leavitt race, but in the end, it appeared that it was more of a placeholder for Leavitt’s camp. Once Sorsby fell through, Leavitt moved back up near the top of LSU’s board once again, and the Wildcats were able to flip Kenny Minchey from his Nebraska commitment.

That would have to be the end of the story, right? Leavitt had to be a done deal to LSU, especially with a visit on the horizon, or so it seemed.

Demond Williams and LSU

Even while Leavitt was on his trip to Baton Rouge this past week, a story surfaced around Washington star quarterback Demond Williams Jr. entering the transfer portal, even after he had just resigned with the Huskies. LSU was quickly named as the top contender for the team. With the general understanding about how these things work and the backchanneling involved, this was clearly a player that Kiffin and LSU had some high interest in. In fact, according to a source, the Tigers program had actually shown some interest in Williams before he resigned with the team.

The Leavitt situation did seem to feed into this move for LSU. While there was legitimate interest in Leavitt, the negotiations were pretty far apart. Williams appeared like potentially a better choice, and for a hot minute, it looked like Kiffin may have gotten his guy.

Unfortunately for LSU, the Washington program was not happy. With the diminutive passer already resigned, there appeared to be legal action on the horizon. This situation led to Williams changing his representation, and quickly, things broke down. It was announced by Pete Thamel of ESPN on Thursday night that Williams had made the decision to return to the Huskies in 2026. Once again, LSU was back to the drawing board.

Washington quarterback Demond Williams has announced his intent to return to Washington. He’d announced earlier this week he’d intended to transfer. pic.twitter.com/wABgy71d34
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) January 9, 2026

With the bridge burned now with Leavitt, the former Arizona State quarterback was set to visit both Tennessee and Miami. Kiffin and LSU are now running out of options. In Kiffin’s quest to find his ideal starting quarterback, he inadvertently created a portal love triangle at one point between Leavitt and Sorsby, hurt some feelings, burned some bridges, helped some signal callers get paid even more, and still sits with no quarterback of his own.

Where does LSU go from here?

That is the million-dollar question right now. Perhaps LSU can eye a player like Dylan Raiola (Nebraska) or a younger player with a little more boom-or-bust upside, but there doesn’t appear to be a clear answer right now. With Kiffin’s track record, I am sure that LSU will be just fine. There may even be some pretty fun signal callers playing at some random D2 school right now. This was, however, not the cleanest process of all time, and now all eyes are on LSU and its odd quarterback portal process.