Lane Kiffin Goes From King Of Portal To A Near King Of Mardi Gras At Endymion Over Weekend

By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor

Former LSU football coach Les Miles had to win the national championship at LSU in the 2007 season before he could just ride in a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans.

Present LSU football coach Lane Kiffin, who left the Ole Miss head coaching job for the Tigers after the 2025 regular season, hasn’t coached a game for LSU yet. But he just took over the city of New Orleans Saturday as a co-grand marshal at the Endymion parade.

Miles and some players from the 2007 team rode in the Bacchus parade in 2008. On Saturday, Endymion parade goers yelled for Kiffin to win the 2026 national championship during the festivities as Kiffin – known as the Portal King – recently signed the No. 1 Transfer Portal class in the country with 41 new players.

After his ride in Endymion as the co-grand marshal, I asked Lane Kiffin if the LSU Tiger fans on the route were asking for a national championship:

"I don't know. They were just yelling at us, we were throwing beads. It was just great. The energy, the passion we felt from the… pic.twitter.com/001I0Q9pWn

— Garland Gillen (@garlandgillen) February 15, 2026

New Orleans newly elected mayor Helena Moreno presented Kiffin with the symbolic key to the city and a large public decree that covered half of Kiffin’s body.

Lane Kiffin accepts a key to the city of New Orleans — not to Baton Rouge, councilman Matt Willard says — after being told that he is expected to bring a national title to Louisiana next year. pic.twitter.com/0OXmRHtLEt

— Ramon Antonio Vargas (@RVargasWrites) February 15, 2026

“It was unprecedented for an LSU football coach,” WVUE-TV Fox 8 sports managing editor Garland Gillen told Tiger Rag on Monday morning. “He hasn’t coached a game yet, and he’s a co-grand marshal of Endymion. It’s amazing.”

Gillen was host for WVUE’s live coverage of Endymion and interviewed Kiffin after the parade disbanded in the Superdome. He asked Kiffin if he heard the yells for a national championship in his first season.

Lane Kiffin needs a great man like Cedric Burns to handle Day to Day Ops. https://t.co/HI6t9yWgT8

— Jim Dunaway (@jimdunaway) February 15, 2026

“I don’t know. They were just yelling at us, and we were throwing beads,” Kiffin said. “It was just great – the energy, the passion you feel from the state of Louisiana.”

Kiffin repeated his hashtag phrase – “It’s just different here” – that he first used at his introductory press conference as LSU’s coach on Dec. 1.

“There was really no other way to say it,” Kiffin told Gillen. “It was just different. Everyone on the float was saying the same thing.”

Kiffin’s son Monte, known as Knox, and his nephew Christian, known as Cookie, rode with him on the float as did LSU former national champion gymnast and current LSU gymnastics assistant coach Haleigh Bryant and former All-American LSU gymnast Aleah Finnegan.

The other co-grand marshal on another float was Arthur Hardy, who has published the can’t-miss Mardi Gras guide every Mardi Gras for the past 50 years. The Mardi Gras seasons ends on Tuesday.

“He was nice to everybody,” Gillen said of Kiffin. “It looked like he was having fun. We had heard he doesn’t do well in big crowds, so we didn’t know if he was going to come over and interview with us. I just grabbed him. And he stayed for a while after. He was great.”

Lane Kiffin Still Has Much To Learn About Down Here – His 1st Spring Drills To Clash With Jazz Fest

Gillen asked Kiffin about spring practice, which begins on March 24.

“We’re excited to get back to work after the holiday,” he said.