Lane Kiffin Keeps Preaching Against Assuming A National Title, While Players Keep Talking Natty

By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor

Considering how good coach Lane Kiffin’s Ole Miss team was last season in reaching the College Football Playoff national semifinals and finishing 13-2, and then the 41-man No. 1 Transfer Portal class he signed in 2026 as LSU’s new coach, the expectations were coming.

Many LSU fans are just penciling in the Tigers for a trip to Las Vegas for the national championship game on Jan. 25.

“A lot of people are saying, ‘They have a $40 million roster, so they should be good.’ But is that a short-sighted way to look at things with the transfer portal and the way the roster is constructed?,” a reporter asked Kiffin at his press conference Tuesday.

“Yeah, I think that’s a really fair question,” Kiffin said. “Because I think that is what a lot of people assume. But there’s a lot that goes into building a team. And I’m not confirming or denying the numbers. I’m not going to get into numbers up here. But a lot goes into making the right team, but once they’re there, there are also breaks – injuries, breaks in games. Within that roster is, how do they play together? How well does the quarterback play, especially? You’ve got to do a lot of work within that – get the right guys and get them to mesh together.”

LSU QB Sam Leavitt returned from foot injury Saturday just in time for last spring scrimmage and threw a TD bomb.https://t.co/lWKuo083PY

— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) April 28, 2026

And sometimes that mesh doesn’t click until the second season after the class. Kiffin signed the No. 1 portal class in 2024 with 27 players, but his team finished only 9-3 in the regular season and 5-3 in the league with losses to Kentucky (4-8, 1-7 SEC) and Florida (8-5, 4-4 SEC). The next season, Ole Miss finished the regular season 11-1, 7-1 in the SEC before Kiffin left for the LSU job.

“Schedules are so much more important than people think,” Kiffin said. “Who you play and when.”

LSU, which opens the season on Sept. 5 at home against Clemson, plays five SEC games on the road this season in the new nine-game league schedule. That starts with a blood bath at Ole Miss on Sept. 19, at Auburn with new coach Alex Golesh on Oct. 24 and back-to-back away games to end the regular season on Nov. 21 at Tennessee and at Arkansas on Nov. 28. Three of the four home SEC games are against projected top contenders – Texas A&M on Sept. 26, Alabama on Nov. 7 and Texas on Nov. 14.

“The schedule’s a major part,” Kiffin said.

But not all of Kiffin’s players have gotten the memo.

Just last week, junior linebacker Davhon Keys made it clear what he expects in 2026.

“We’re definitely going to put our heads down and work hard this summer,” he said as spring drills were coming to a close with the final scrimmage last Saturday. “We know what we came here to do. We didn’t come here to, you know, for eight or nine wins.”

LSU finished just 7-6 last season after coach Brian Kelly signed the No. 1 portal class of 2025 with 18 transfers. He was fired after a 5-3 start, 2-3 in the SEC.

“We came here to go to the playoffs,” Keys said of something that has not happened at LSU since the 2019 national championship season. “We came here to win the natty. So, we’re all in on the same goal, and we’re going to do whatever it takes. We’re going to show up early, go hard every day.”

During the first week of spring practice in March, Kiffin made similar comments when asked about his “national championship” roster.

“Things don’t happen overnight,” he said. “There’s a ton of work to do to get the program back to where everybody around here want it to be.”

Prince(will) Umanmielen didn’t get paid a King’s ransom to leave Ole Miss to “build” a program at LSU. He came to win the national championship.https://t.co/412MrJjAcL

— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) April 2, 2026

But then a few days later, Ole Miss transfer Princewill Umanmielen – the No. 1 edge rusher and No. 3 player overall in the portal – talked national title.

“Uh, this ain’t no like first-year thing,” he said. “We’re trying to go all the way. So, that’s the mindset. If you got like a ‘building’ mindset, then this ain’t the place.”

Of course, Umanmielen is a senior, so this is it for him.

After 15 days of spring practice, Kiffin had not changed his mindset.

“We’ve still got a lot of work to do,” he said Tuesday.