LSU, of course, is the talk of the college-football world, and even beyond. That has been good for the brand, while providing yet one more opportunity to witness how comfortable so many people are with their own ignorance.

We’d share a few, but I have our own judgment to consider.

But deeper than the spectacle, the circus, of it all, is a man whom I both like and don’t like, and perhaps there’s an attraction to his story there because I can relate so well to that divided public opinion about myself.

Lane Kiffin is a storm personality, as I explored in Monday’s MIKE CHECK. Part of that personality, of course, is an irritant, a wholly dislikeable aura that will absolutely polarize most of that opinion base. But also, because of that personality, he is the type that one can count on to force real change into any situation that absolutely needs it—and he does it because the storm personality practically insists that the hidden corruption come out to defend itself, thereby exposing itself. College football in general is the case in point, as even many of the Kiffin haters will readily admit, and for them the man is akin to Ray Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” a story, in a nutshell, about a circus.

Here is some exposure of how I personally feel, if this is your first time to my ongoing work on all of this:

I relate to him, frankly, because if you go deeper, you find in Kiffin’s approach to life many things I unequivocally believe in. Kiffin isn’t Catholic, but I personally believe in some of those things precisely because I am.

And one of those things is how the old Catholic way doesn’t just prepare—it sets apart special time to prepare for that preparation. And here is the specific Kiffin quote from Monday’s presser that got me to thinking about this:

“I don’t believe you practice poorly and then just play great on game day. I don’t believe that happens, and it won’t happen over the course of time.”

A talented team may escape one week of playing poorly. Fans have seen plenty of that. Last year’s Florida game when they were “spoiled” comes to mind. It is on the same plane as a naturally bright student doing well on tests for a time because they can be crafty, but with time and life’s justice, very few continually perform excellently by waiting for the pivotal moment before deciding to act excellently.

Moreover, because preparation doesn’t equate to the wearing of nice suits before a game, Kiffin also dismissed the idea that requiring players to travel in coats and ties has anything to do with winning. “Never has,” he said. I understand the instinct behind the suits, especially as a former coach and teacher; I even enjoyed wearing them on gamedays when I played in high school and having my own players wear them when I was a coach. Sometimes such external reminders help us cultivate internal order—which is a Catholic trait unto itself. But the coat can be an opportunity for show too—what folks might call vain ritual or empty prayers for the Catholic—and fail to reveal the discipline missing beneath it, until the inevitable unexpected loss comes along, of course.

If the suit doesn’t have preparation behind it, it won’t produce success any more than ashes on the forehead will produce the penance and sorrow for sin to which the ashes recall us.

Kiffin has stripped away what he deems a cosmetic theater, forced the media to ask him about it, and therefore given himself another opportunity, using different language, to raise the demands on his football team. If his players are permitted to travel comfortably, it says nothing about their motivation to practice uncomfortably. Even if the program no longer performs some of the old outward rituals of seriousness, it says nothing about their seriousness on the football field and in the operations building where it matters.

I have watched students and players both assume they’ll be ready when the time comes by drumming up the intensity necessary. They are inattentive and unproductive during the preparation time, practicing at half-speed when the “lights aren’t on,” then suddenly want to shine when the moment arrives. Test day and game day don’t make the student and player—they reveal him.

Similarly, and I’ll turn to myself for this one, the old Catholic way vs the modern Catholic way can reveal similar dynamics. The old Catholic calendar reflects Kiffin’s first principle so thoroughly that it prepared the faithful even for preparation. Lent didn’t suddenly arrive on Ash Wednesday or even as a looming date on the Mardi Gras weekend of debauchery before. The old Catholic way didn’t even allow for such spectacles, knowing that humans cannot do what they please indefinitely and expect immediate spiritual transformation. It is why you will hear so many homilies halfway through Lent talking about people failing in their Lenten disciplines—but what they won’t say nowadays, not that I used to hear when I attended the modern Mass most of my life—is that the failure has less to do with the “aw shucks that’s just a part of our flesh” escape and more to do with the preparation for the Lenten preparation for Easter. Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima—all Sundays I had never heard of before I turned to Tradition—removed the Alleluia earlier as a siren of sorts, introduced violet instead of all at once, and directed the soul toward penance before the Lenten fast itself began.

Sort of like the sun comes up slowly, getting us ready for the full light. It is my ongoing joke, but oh so truthful maxim with people, that Old Catholicism believed so deeply in preparation that it prepared you for the preparation.

The same soul of that Faith governed vigils before feasts, which were penitential days of preparation, often involving fasting and their own Mass with the mortification theme—not merely an anticipatory Mass “to make Mass” so we can do other things on Sunday. Likewise, fasting before Communion went beyond the one hour we’re inside the Church anyway and not even eating, examination of conscience was demanded every single night and before Confession, and sincere prayer before important work was sincerely promoted. These are just a few of the many that everyone can start today. God wasn’t some pushover we go to whenever we feel like it, and His grace certainly wasn’t expected as too many do, through vain rehearsals and a procrastinating spirit. Such are the trappings of presumption—a sin in itself lost or at least abbreviated in modern teaching. The Church knew the soul’s failings, and arranged the liturgical season and its teaching so that the faithful Catholic would be more disposed to receive and cooperate with God.

There are numerous Scripture passages I could cite, but here’s one that we don’t live today: “Every one that striveth for the mastery, refraineth himself from all things” (1 Corinthians IX.25).

And in Lane Kiffin and LSU’s case, part of that refraining is to avoid the adulation they are now receiving everywhere for their dismantling of Clemson.

Rat poison, Nick Saban called it. And I love how Kiffin is unapologetically just using it for his own.

Winning a game or earning an ‘A’ on a test or being true to a religious discipline for four whole days without the cognitive, physical, and spiritual preparation it takes to go the distance is the worst thing that can happen. Such early success ensures the fall is hard, and makes even more likely that a return to the success will fail miserably as well.

We perhaps saw some of that in Brian Kelly’s tenure with LSU, where he won the SEC West in his first year, but most everyone ignores the fact that the team wasn’t particularly impressive on a consistent basis while doing it.

Skyler Green’s early punt return for a touchdown in 2003, a game the Tigers lost to Florida, comes to mind as well. You may remember the one, and why I bring it up, what with everything Saban had been warning about leading up to the game and the “I toldya so’s” he came with after.

Saban’s message wasn’t heeded back then, but the Tigers recovered the true spirit of his program in time to win their first title since 1958—overcoming an apparent failure of a week leading up to that Florida game where they were, indeed, ingesting the rat poison. Such a warning is what Kiffin is preaching to his players this week, even putting up a new reminder sign to do it. We don’t particularly enjoy the profanity in it, but such is the way of the storm personality.

Louisiana Tech will bus in to Baton Rouge this weekend having won its opener 80–6, which should be at least enough to make LSU players look twice at the opponent before fans shrug the game off and look ahead to the showdown in Oxford. The Bulldogs scored on their first 11 possessions, which should give Blake Baker’s defense plenty of ammunition and motivation come Saturday night. LSU should still win handily, yes, but you won’t find this space providing any of the rat poison. LSU in fact has not accomplished anything yet other than being 1-0 after a Clemson win—which is the same thing they’d accomplished by this point in a 7-6 embarrassment of a season last year. The expectation that LSU will blow Tech out is precisely what makes Saturday a useful test of this age-old principle.

The other stuff being stoked by the morons should cancel out the ESPN talking heads just fine. They have no idea they are only helping Kiffin, specifically because they can’t control their strangely untamable hatred of him, and by extension the entire LSU football team—who absolutely reads that alongside the rat poison.

The score should reflect the difference in talent and the anger of a football team salivating for their next villain role. I’ll say LSU 66, Louisiana Tech 17, because I want to see Kiffin unhappy about the 17 points after the game, but that as always will probably be wrong. The more revealing result will be whether the Tigers play like a team still preparing for what it claims to want, even after the college football world spent an entire week telling them how good they were.

Thank you for reading The Hayride!