Lane Kiffin continues to embrace the villain role at LSU

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Lane Kiffin continues to embrace the villain role at LSU originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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Whether it’s completely fair or not, the LSU Tigers have been vilified for several factors since last year.

Lane Kiffin accepted the LSU job just before Ole Miss was set to compete in the college football playoff. Rebels officials informed him that he would no longer have access to any aspect of the program.

This first ‘issue’ was the beginning of what felt like a villain arc in a story. The decision on Kiffin’s remaining games in 2025 took an exhaustive amount of time. A decision was expected by mid-morning. It was almost dinnertime when Kiffin boarded a plane to Baton Rouge. With narratives that Kiffin gave his staff ultimatums. Get on this plane now, or you won’t have a job on my LSU staff. Kiffin has since addressed that narrative as false.

Kiffin also leaned into the name he was taking over and remained aggressive in the transfer portal. LSU was given the No. 2 transfer portal ranking by On3. This was unchanged from the 2025 season. A total of 43 new players, most of whom have an 87 rating or higher. Including five former Ole Miss players, 5-star offensive tackle Jordan Seaton and several other prominent names in college football. They have also reportedly spent north of $50M on top of the $20M from revenue sharing.

Taking advantage of loopholes

Recruiting and transfers are one thing. The post-transfer portal era has been referred to as the ‘Wild West’ for a reason. With NIL as a factor, those with big pockets make big moves. It would be disingenuous to believe that Kiffin did not see that as an expected opportunity to trade Ole Miss for LSU.

Recently, Kiffin drew the ire of most college football fans, NFL fans or sports fans in general when he decided to take advantage of a policy/legal loophole. Change is always a difficult thing to grasp following decades of the old way. Doesn’t matter what the policy or law states, college football fans still remember the sports agent/declared for the draft policy. NIL obviously changed that. However, expecting fans to embrace players that left for the NFL coming back, was a stretch even for Kiffin.

The villain makes a halftime speech

While leading Clemson 31-3 at halftime on Saturday night, Kiffin fired up his players with a profane tirade. Admittedly, if you tone down the volume and word choice, his comments can be reduced to “they don’t work as hard as you do, don’t feel bad for killing them.” Still not a great sentiment, but the language and tone make it seem worse than it was. However, it contributes to the idea that Kiffin is not beating the villain’s allegations.

It does speak to a concept being echoed recently regarding Kiffin. It was always Kiffin vs the World. This short stint at Tennessee was not received well. Including the destruction of personal property and fan unrest. Fifteen years later, when he left Ole Miss before a playoff run, the sentiment was similar. Betrayal. Kiffin even commented in his LSU introductory press conference that a fan tried to run him off the road on his way to fly to LSU.

Some have even argued about a “nepo-baby” mentality towards authority (Lane Kiffin is the son of Monte Kiffin). Specifically, his bosses as a head football coach throughout his career. Both the Raiders and the USC Trojans fired Kiffin in strange ways. The Raiders did it publicly in a press conference when the late owner, Al Davis, called him a “disgrace to the team.” USC opted to fire him in the middle of the night following a 19-point loss to Arizona State.

MORE:LSU Tigers football printable 2026 schedule with dates, times and TV lineup

Paul Finebaum is back at it, again

Most recently, Kiffin embraced his villain role by setting his sights on ESPN’s Paul Finebaum… again. “I like Paul Finebaum,” Kiffin started before taking some shots. “They have a job to do and I understand that. Those things used to make me mad and upset. If you study over time, if Paul’s on you, you probably have been doing well, or you’re about to do really well.” That was the politically correct nice section.

“I always remember Paul every other year at Alabama, it was Saban’s done, the dynasty’s over,” Kiffin continued. “He can’t coach, he can’t keep up anymore, so Paul would kill him every other year, then he’d go win a National Championship. But he is the definition of rat poison.”

The term “rat poison” as it pertains to a sports context, is media praise intended to make players and teams complacent.

LSU is 1-0 following a 51-10 win over Clemson. They will play Louisiana Tech on Saturday before the highly anticipated revenge game between LSU and his former team, No. 9 Ole Miss. Currently, LSU has five SEC teams on the schedule ranked in the top 20. Three of those five are currently ranked in the top 10.

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