Grading the hire: LSU landed its white whale in Lane Kiffin
It's finally official: Lane Kiffin is leaving Ole Miss football to be the LSU coach.
Leaving the Rebels while they're in the College Football Playoff will ruffle some feathers, but that hasn't bothered Kiffin before.
Here are our grades, from the Tigers' perspective of the hire:
Blake Toppmeyer: A
If you’d formed a list of who LSU should pursue after it fired Brian Kelly, it might have looked like this:
- Lane Kiffin
- Revert to option 1 and get it done.
LSU landed the white whale. The Tigers secured the hire they should have made last time this job was open. Kiffin turning heel on Mississippi before the College Football Playoff is a bad look for the sport and the coaching industry, but that’s not LSU’s problem at this moment.
Kiffin torched his Ole Miss legacy on the way out the door, but the record books will say he was the program’s best coach since Johnny Vaught retired in 1973 after a tenure that peaked in the late 1950s and early ‘60s.
Kiffin is the nation’s best coach to never appear in a CFP game. Considering the coaches who have been to the playoffs aren’t leaving their jobs, he’s the top pony of this carousel.
Kiffin’s mastery on offense will be a boon for LSU, after the Tigers spent the season spinning their tires. He’ll upgrade the quarterback production. Just consider what he did with Division II transfer Trinidad Chambliss. Simply sublime. That came after Jaxson Dart and Matt Corral thrived under Kiffin at Ole Miss. He’s close to a guarantee for quality quarterback production, and if you have a quarterback, you have a chance.
LSU played the transfer game in its final season under Kelly, but nobody plays portal roulette better than the Portal King himself. Kiffin will upgrade this roster, and LSU will give him the funds to do it. Bet on that.
Can Kiffin meet LSU’s demands for a national championship? That’s an unanswered question. Kiffin went 0-4 against Nick Saban and he’s 1-2 against Kirby Smart.
Also, how well will he recruit in Louisiana? Also unanswered.
Kiffin’s career never looked better than it did when he had an SEC underdog punching above its historical weight. Now, he’s rolling with the big boys again. That hasn’t brought out his best in the past, but that doesn’t mean LSU and Kiffin won’t pair well.
Matt Hayes: A-
He was the first and only answer in the coaching hopper for LSU and Florida. One school opened its arms and was up for anything, the other hesitated and wanted some control (see: a general manager to oversee the program).
Guess which school won out?
LSU won big because it got one of the game's best coaches and a majority of his offensive staff. It won because Kiffin can bring what LSU has been chasing since 2019: a wide-open, get out of the way offense. The Tigers had it iin Year 2 under Brian Kelly, and Jayden Daniels won the Heisman.
But LSU couldn't stop anyone defensively, and was never really a factor in the SEC since. Now, the problem: Kiffin's history at Ole Miss is points in bunches, and eventually break serve on defense and get off the field.
LSU had that with Daniels in 2023, and doesn't want to go back to it. The idea isn't to upgrade the quarterback position, or find a way to score points. Until this year's blowout of a season, that hasn't been a problem.
So then what has LSU mortgaged its future (again) for? A coach that must win recruiting battles in the south, that must continue his hot streak of hits in the transfer portal, and must hire an elite defensive coordinator with SEC experience who can get his offense the ball. That's all.
If any of that doesn't play out, and LSU stumbles around and loses to those it shouldn't ― I don't know, Ole Miss ― this shotgun marriage will run flat faster than a gin fizz on a steamy Bayou summer night.
This isn't wait and see. Kiffin must win now. Day 1.