Lane Kiffin created LSU's championship expectations. Now, he's struggling to live up to them

Backed by a $40+ million roster, the Tigers sit at 6-4 with zero wins over ranked opponents after a gut-wrenching collapse against Texas killed their CFP hopes Nov 15, 2026 at 9:01 am ET • 4 min read BATON ROUGE, La. – Raleek Brown went in motion. Davohn Keys reacted late on the coverage. Arch Manning threw an easy touchdown. Texas wins 22-21. LSU's College Football Playoff hopes evaporated. And with them went any remaining benefit of the doubt for Lane Kiffin's debut season. "(Davohn) has him, so you know …" Kiffin said with an exasperated shoulder shrug. "A lot of plays before that." LSU entered the 2026 season as a swaggering, give-no-fu----, headline-generating machine. Kiffin swirled at the center of it. He trolled. He did hot yoga in opposing SEC cities. He wagged his finger in the face of the SEC as LSU went to war with the league over adding players who signed professional contracts for a fifth collegiate season. He didn't arrive in Baton Rouge promising a long-term rebuild. He arrived selling an immediate championship vision. "Imagine if we had pro players," Kiffin said confidently in his halftime interview during a Week 1 blowout win over Clemson. They sure could use them nine games later. The Tigers have gone just 3-4 since in games against Power Four competition, losing to the only four currently ranked teams (Ole Miss, Kentucky, Alabama, Texas) on their schedule. For most coaches, a 6-4 record, especially when they returned just eight starters, would be considered a solid building block late in their debut season. Not for Kiffin. There are no legitimate excuses to be made for one of the sport's most expensive rosters (maybe the most expensive) and one of the sport's highest-paid head coaches. Kiffin, in his own way, owned that in the aftermath of an 11-point, second-half collapse against Texas. "I get it," Kiffin said. "Underperformance. It doesn't matter if the games have been close or if they go down to the last six seconds. I was brought here to win, and we need to win more than that."Kiffin, in his own way, also offered explanations for LSU's struggles. There were the last-play busts that cost the Tigers against Kentucky and Texas. Make those stops and LSU's record looks quite different. There are the special teams miscues – a missed 38-yard field goal just ahead of halftime could have made the difference for the Tigers – that have plagued the team all year. There is the barrage of turnovers that have come from Leavitt's frenetic play style. Kiffin pointed to Sarkisian's Texas roster as an explanation for LSU's shortcomings. Sarkisian, in Year 6 in Austin, didn't have a roster that looked like Texas' on Saturday night when he went 5-7 in his Longhorns debut. It took time to build that sort of depth for Texas to withstand the pressure and difficulty of an SEC slate. "You build things, and they take a little bit of time," Kiffin said. "Watch warmups. Those guys have done a great job building a team with size, with backups, with special teams players. "It didn't look like that his first year." Kiffin's comparison to Sarkisian is a fair argument. No Year 1 roster will be ideal for a coach's needs and preferences. But there is an obvious flaw in Kiffin's rationale: money. When Sarkisian inherited Texas' roster in 2021, the Longhorns weren't exactly a team on the scrap heap. Tom Herman went 7-3 the year prior. But Sarkisian had to build the roster his way. It was the early stages of the transfer portal and before name, image and likeness payments. Roster construction took more time. Kiffin shouldn't get that same patience. LSU more than doubled its roster investment this offseason, going from approximately $18-20 million in 2025 to well over $40 million in 2026, per sources. The Tigers went all-in to land Kiffin and gave him far more resources to work with than Brian Kelly had just one year prior. Sarkisian needed time to build Texas into his vision. Kiffin had the resources to build LSU into his vision immediately. That's the difference. LSU will get better. Kiffin's track record of success – even if he is just 15-28 in his career against AP Top 25 opponents – indicates he'll eventually build LSU back up into a contender. Until then, however, Kiffin will be a piñata that fans and the media take a swing at over and over again. Realistically, that's an expectation trap of Kiffin's own creation. He could have taken the LSU job in a more restrained fashion. Less trolling. Less behind-the-scenes sniping of Ole Miss players. Fewer shots at his old employers in Oxford. More restraint in the portal and with trying to create an edge in the court system. But he can't help but shrug at the podium when asked about miscues. He can't help but follow up ownership of a loss with reasons for his roster's shortcomings. "Yes, we need to win games," Kiffin said. "But I also don't overreact. If we covered a guy on that last play or if that fumble comes out a second earlier or whatever, we're in here and none of these questions are happening, and you're like, 'What a great job! What an awesome way to finish.'"Lane, as my CBS Sports colleague John Talty would put it, just can't help being Lane.