By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
No matter how bad LSU (7-5) may continue to look in tonight’s third tier Texas Bowl against No. 21 Houston (9-3) in Houston (8:15 p.m., ESPN), know this:
New coach Lane Kiffin, who will not be coaching the game, arrived at LSU on a dank Sunday, Nov. 30, as the greatest head football coach ever hired by LSU … on the day of the hiring, that is.
Nick Saban became the greatest coach in LSU history once the games started as he won LSU’s first national championship since 1958 in his fourth season in 2003, but he arrived not as accomplished as Kiffin is now.
Saban was 48 when LSU introduced him on Nov. 30, 1999, and his best two seasons were 9-2 at Michigan State and Toledo. Still, Saban was the most accomplished football coach hire in LSU history at the time. Because he had gradually turned around a major program in a major conference amid scholarship limitations from NCAA probation at Michigan State, and he was up for the New York Giants head coaching job in 1997.
Brian Kelly was the previous greatest LSU football hire at the time of hire by then-athletic director Scott Woodward. He turned around a then-average Notre Dame with seven double-digit-win seasons in 12 years with a BCS national championship appearance and two College Football Playoffs. He was the winningest active college football coach in the country at the time, and still is.
But Kelly was 60 when he came to LSU, and we know now his best years were behind him. And perhaps the 10-year, $100 million contract he received from Woodward made him less hungry to achieve – similar to the aging Major League Baseball star getting an oversized contract in his mid-30s and never playing up to it. Maybe Woodward should have seen that. Maybe he should’ve performed more due diligence on Kelly instead of just throwing money at the opening.
Kiffin is 50, and his best years appear to be ahead of him. We will find out. And his contract – though expensive at $91 million – is only for seven years. Makes better fiscal sense.
And Kiffin’s four double-digit win seasons in just six years after quickly rebuilding an average Ole Miss team are better than what Kelly did at Notre Dame, which had and has more resources than Ole Miss in addition to legendary and much more recent winning tradition. Kiffin’s turnaround was quicker and made more history. And it was in the SEC, which provided much more difficult schedules than Kelly ever faced at Notre Dame and made it tougher on him at LSU than he likely realized.
Ole Miss had just two 10-win seasons from 1972-2020. Notre Dame had 10 double-digit win seasons between 1972 and 2010 when Kelly took over and had won three national titles from 1973-88.
Kiffin is also easily the most sought after head coach hire by LSU in history as both Florida and Florida State were courting him very hard. Some Florida fans and fans disguised as media didn’t believe they didn’t get him until the Lane Plane landed in Baton Rouge. Ole Miss also tried hard to keep him – much harder than Michigan State tried to keep Saban. My, how spartan, and dumb, were the Spartans!
Saban had been sought after by NFL teams, but not at the time LSU got him. No one else was trying to hire Kelly either.
Oklahoma State coach Les Miles had been considered by Alabama twice, but when LSU hired him after the 2004 season, no one else was trying to get him. Miles arrived in 2005 after turning around Oklahoma State in more impressive fashion than Saban did at Michigan State, but it was nothing like what Kiffin did at Ole Miss. Miles was hugely successful at LSU with the national championship in 2007 as he did an excellent job coaching Saban’s plethora of players (more than 30 from No. 1 and No. 2 recruiting classes in 2003 and ’04) and continued to win consistently for several years.
In many ways, new Ole Miss coach Pete Golding is akin to Miles as he inherits a program on the rise from Kiffin. And if Golding wins it all this season, it will clearly be not only with Kiffin’s players, but with Kiffin’s offensive coaches.
Ed Orgeron was only 10-25 in three seasons as Ole Miss’ head coach before going 11-4 as an interim coach at USC and LSU. But he won beyond his work history from 2016 through the national championship season in 2019.
Among LSU’s previous successful coaches, Paul Dietzel and Charles McClendon were assistants before becoming LSU’s head coach. Bill Arnsparger was 7-28 with the Giants in his only head coaching job.
Kiffin also has something else no other previous LSU head coach hire has. And that is genius status on the offensive side of the football. Miles and Gerry DiNardo were offensive coordinators as assistant coaches before becoming LSU head coaches, but they were in truth glorified offensive line coaches with rudimentary knowledge and practice of the passing game.
Kiffin is the first true, progressive and innovative offensive coordinator to become an LSU head coach in history. And Kiffin is not Pac-12, pass happy. He has an old school belief in the run game as well and believes in defense as he has hired some of the best defensive coordinators in the country – such as Golding and D.J. Durkin while at Ole Miss.
Kiffin’s hire also brings back the Saban touch to LSU. He is the first of many Saban pupils to become LSU’s head coach. Like Saban before him, Kiffin has the keenest of eyes for talent.
“Since Nick retired, there’s been no one who can inventory talent and use it appropriately better than Lane,” an LSU source said back in November while also promising Kiffin was headed to LSU.
And Kiffin comes to LSU with easily the most previous head coaching jobs of any other LSU hire at five – Oakland Raiders, Tennessee, USC, Florida Atlantic and Ole Miss. And, more importantly, he appears to have grown up and matured through those previous jobs, including his tutelage as offensive coordinator under the master Saban at Alabama from 2014-16.
He became the first coach in Ole Miss history to win 10 regular season games in 2021 and first to win 11 in the 2025 regular season. When Ole Miss beat Tulane in the playoffs on Dec. 20, it won 12 in a season for the first time ever … with Kiffin’s players and Kiffin’s offensive coaches.
Regardless of what Ole Miss says, Kiffin’s mark is all over one of Ole Miss’ greatest seasons ever in 2025-26, or its best ever.
“We told Lane LSU was not just a place to come win games,” said LSU athletic director Verge Ausberry, who hired him. “He’s done that already. We told him it was a place to contend for national championships year in and year out.”
Ausberry also told Kiffin, “I’m going to leave you alone and let you coach the team.”
That sold Kiffin as much as anything.
Now, like Nick Saban before him, stay out of his way.
The national championship Lane Train is whistling.
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