By Jeff LeJeune — CBS Sports is predicting LSU to finish Lane Kiffin’s first regular season at 10-2, with a 7-2 SEC record and a spot in the College Football Playoff. The only two losses would come in places that carry a little extra Kiffin history.

My guess is that every LSU fan would take it, despite where the projected losses come. But of course, if one in particular happened—one just a little northeast of Baton Rouge a few hundred miles away—it would sting like the worst of the Saban losses.

According to the projection from Brad Crawford, LSU would beat Clemson, Louisiana Tech, Texas A&M, McNeese, Kentucky, Mississippi State, Auburn, Alabama, Texas, and Arkansas. The two losses would come on the road, one at Ole Miss and one at Tennessee, where some may not know Kiffin coached for one year in 2009 before heading west to USC. The 10-2 and third place SEC finish behind Texas and Georgia projects the Tigers as the No 9 seed in the playoff, traveling to Ohio State in the first round.

That Oxford loss would be… something.

All told from the conference, CBS has Texas, Georgia, LSU, and Ole Miss in the CFP. Of course CBS isn’t the only one entertaining the diehards two and three months before opening kickoff, and others have a much more sober outlook on this first year under Kiffin. The debate was probably never whether Kiffin would be an upgrade. The debate was and is whether LSU can turn an expensive, reconstructed roster into a team quickly enough to secure a playoff berth for only the second time in the CFP’s 13-year history. The other, of course, was in the four-team era and ended with a national title in 2019.

A few others:

Bill Connelly and ESPN

Athlon Sports

Adam Spencer and Saturday Down South

Spenser Davis and Saturday Down South

While LSU fans would clearly take the CBS guess, if not during the season at least after it, a more useful reaction involves the program culture and infrastructure we’ve been following here for a week now.

For the last couple of pieces, the discussion has not simply been about Coach Kiffin as a personality or one more offseason story about the chase of a five-star recruit. The point has been that LSU is now openly leaning into the professional reality of college football, and that there are stories to draw from that. The Tigers have constructed a NFL-style front office, have been aggressive in the transfer portal, and have been on a sizzling June recruiting run, even if June commitments should not be treated like faxed-in certainties of a national title. In other terms, LSU has placed more structure around NIL, roster construction, player retention, and the financial side of the sport instead of just chasing stars, no matter what position they are or what their personality says about their potential loyalty when the transfer portal opens next year.

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One might be glad, for instance, that Kiffin “missed” on Tennessee-now-dismissed $2 million, “star” edge rusher Chaz Coleman, and now-wandering-without-a-team-or-league $5 million Texas Tech quarterback Brenden Sorsby. One may harbor similar feelings when a teenager holds an announcement event for his college football program of choice on his high school’s campus and plays a little game of hats for the crowd’s entertainment.

A 10-2 prediction in year one is a compliment, but of course ultimately just a little fun in June. Ultimately, as well, it is only a conflation of LSU’s historical national pedigree and the explosive teams Kiffin has fielded elsewhere. In that regard it is not wholly unlike what many thought the previously successful Brian Kelly would be. And like it was with Kelly, few if any, perhaps except Kiffin himself, are talking about a gentle transition. Nobody is treating LSU as a program that needs three years to learn how Kiffin operates. The assumption from the outside and from fans themselves is that LSU has enough talent, enough money, enough infrastructure, and enough vision to be in the playoff immediately.

And if they indeed play at Ohio State in December they’d better win that one too.

That is why, for such a diehard LSU fan, the CBS prediction matters beyond a meaningless midsummer prognosis. It is not merely one writer’s game-by-game, shot-in-the-fog guess. It is evidence that the national perception of LSU is still where Nick Saban and Les Miles placed it—and that is sort of a fun thing to enjoy, especially if you’re old enough to have experienced the pre-Saban years.

So yes, a 10-2 season with a playoff berth would be a strong first year. It would probably confirm that LSU’s new model and choice of leadership are the right ones.

Still, if anyone knows anything about the preferences of college football fans, at least one of those two projected losses would sting. Tiger fans could probably live with 10-2 and a playoff berth, but they might reasonably ask that the loss not come in Oxford this year, not this year of all years. If there has to be one somewhere painful, perhaps it could come somewhere less personal, even in Baton Rouge if that is possible, when a certain Saban-less team decked in crimson rolls into town in November.