Having examined Lane Kiffin’s recent turn toward subtraction last week, the second round of The Right Lane asks the next question: What happens after a man removes the habits that weakened him and real-time pressure tests what has replaced them?

For Kiffin, that pressure is LSU. LSU will reveal whether subtraction has produced self-command.

Although his first LSU fall camp does not begin until Wednesday, the expectations arrived months ago. Kiffin inherited a team coming off a 7–6 season, then rebuilt much of its roster while the college football world began discussing the CFP as the immediate standard.

Kiffin has chosen to describe that pressure as useful.

“This job has really pushed me out of comfort,” he said at SEC Media Days, explaining that LSU asks more of its head coach than any place he has worked. “Expectations make you uncomfortable. They make you not be able to just go through motions in any aspect of your program, so that’s been awesome.”

It’s just different.

Kiffin’s comment advances the argument he made while discussing sobriety and the subtraction of social media and toxic relationships. Subtraction removed familiar impediments. Entering a program that demands championships, Kiffin is now deliberately placing those new habits under a new kind of pressure.

Catholic teaching calls fortitude the virtue that provides “firmness in difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of the good.” It strengthens a man against temptation, allowing him to confront obstacles without abandoning his proper end.

Football usually associates courage with attacking. Yet the more difficult act of fortitude is often enduring—remaining in command of oneself when pressure practically invites a reckless move.

There is nothing inherently virtuous about being uncomfortable or being pushed outside of a comfort zone. Difficulty can strengthen a man, sure, but it can also expose old triggers, making him angry or impatient. Fortitude doesn’t consist of seeking hardship or suffering for their own sake or pretending pressure doesn’t exist. It keeps a man stalwart even through—especially through—the lows.

What happens if LSU has an early loss, especially if it’s at Ole Miss?

What if they lose the first two or even three games in November?

What if the quarterback room isn’t as strong as it appears?

What if Jordan Seaton goes down with an injury?

What if what if what if…

When Kiffin navigates those tests with the same aplomb he has exhibited at the mic, the subtractions in his life will begin producing visible ends. More importantly for LSU, his response will teach the program that remaining firm after a setback is a better route than turning on one another, demanding precipitous changes, or bolting for the portal.

Avoiding catastrophe syndrome, as Nick Saban might put it, intensified by a college-football climate in which every loss produces demands for a quick fix.

In those moments, fortitude will involve more than refusing to panic. It will require Kiffin to retain enough command of himself to judge players honestly, correct mistakes without acting from anger, and resist whatever shortcut promises immediate relief from criticism.

Winning a national championship is a legitimate professional goal and one of the obvious reasons Kiffin came to LSU. Because he has spoken with certainty that the Tigers will win one, he has increased the pressure on himself. Coaches and fans rarely operate according to the same timetable, and LSU’s appetite will not remain patient indefinitely. Fair or not, that is one of the conditions of the job.

Kiffin need not diminish that appetite. He simply needs to keep it from engulfing him and undoing the self-command his subtractions were meant to produce. LSU hired him to win quickly. His fortitude will be measured by whether he can respect that urgency without becoming consumed by it, pursuing a championship as quickly as sound judgment allows. That is the pressure of coaching somewhere that is, for better and worse, just different.