This isn’t a meltdown, though there is a lot of that out there following LSU’s 35-34 overtime loss to an unranked Kentucky team in Lexington last night.

But we won’t sugarcoat anything, either, because halfway through the 2026 regular season, the lights have largely been turned out on the primary goal Lane Kiffin was hired to meet.

You pay a coach $14 million per year, his staff a collection of seven-figure salaries, including $3.5 million for the defensive coordinator, and your playing roster some $43 million in NIL payments, for one reason. Namely, that your team makes the college football playoffs.

To get to the playoffs requires a 10-2 season against an SEC schedule. It’s possible to make the playoffs at 9-3, and that will become more possible as the playoffs expand. But as of now, 10-2 gets you to the playoffs; everything else is iffy, at best.

And it is not unreasonable for LSU’s fans, boosters and administrators to see making the playoffs, perhaps not every year but more years than not, as a standard the football program should meet. This would put LSU in the top third of the SEC, which is certainly where the school is in terms of commitment to winning in football, and that’s a standard which hasn’t been consistently met in about 15 years. Even so, if Ed Orgeron could win a national championship in 2019 and Brian Kelly could get to the SEC Championship Game in 2022, making the playoffs is not out of bounds as something LSU ought to be able to regularly do.

Prior to last night LSU was seen as a likely playoff participant this year by many, if not most analysts. LSU was ranked #10, which were the season to have ended before the Kentucky game would have put them in the playoffs.

But losing to an unranked team which had barely edged by lowly South Carolina with a one-point overtime win by the same score has a way of changing perceptions. It turns out that South Carolina, now 3-3 after a surprising road win over cratering Florida yesterday – the same Florida team which annihilated Ole Miss, the team which handed Kiffin his first loss, isn’t such a basket case after all. The Gamecocks are only one game worse than LSU in overall record, and a half-game worse in SEC play. And while the transitive property doesn’t work in college football, there really isn’t all that much difference between LSU and South Carolina in terms of play on the field. LSU lost by one in overtime to Kentucky on the road while South Carolina performed that same feat at home, but South Carolina also dominated Florida at Florida.

LSU hasn’t won away from Tiger Stadium in eight tries now.

And that’s what this program is now. Fearsome at home, perpetual losers on the road.

And the fans and commentators all around the South are laughing and pointing at LSU’s fans, donors and administrators for all the trouble they went to in order to bring Kiffin in. LSU is engaged in courtroom wars with the SEC, mostly over Kiffin, at the moment. It’s not unreasonable to see the absolutely bizarre officiating last night – a succession of blown call after blown call was punctuated by a UK tight end getting away with a false start on the last two-point conversion – as a side effect of that courtroom conflict. LSU is largely a pariah in college football because of Kiffin’s presence and his efforts to recruit Da’Quon Wright and Xzavian Harris after both had signed NFL contracts.

I don’t think Kiffin or LSU were wrong in anything they did where Wright or Harris were concerned, and hiring Kiffin wasn’t wrong. But those actions carried costs, and making the juice worth the squeeze means being able to beat unranked teams on the road in the SEC – which is apparently more than he’s capable of. LSU is getting laughed at because of Kiffin right now, and Kiffin is being paid for LSU to be the ones laughing. Instead of the villain, we’re the joke.

Sure, this is about the long haul. Over the long haul, LSU should still be the ones laughing. But for the kind of money being paid, patience and grace don’t come in the package. Let’s not kid ourselves; this is a mercenary crew, and mercenaries don’t get love until they’ve earned it.

I mentioned the $3.5 million being paid to the defensive coordinator. Blake Baker has now established a pattern as the leader of LSU’s defense, and it isn’t a good one. At home, with 100,000 screaming fans disrupting audibles and snap counts, his defense is very good at getting off the field on third downs and making winning plays to separate a score. On the road, with no advantage from the stands, they’re putty in the hands of a mobile quarterback, average at best on third down and utterly committed to folding late in a game when stops are needed. The defense at the end of the first half and regulation last night was utterly vanilla, soft and absolutely toothless in the clutch. Just like it was in the Ole Miss game.

And in overtime, there was no defense at all. Especially on the two-point conversion play which lost the game, when LSU’s linebackers both vacated the tackle box and surrendered the middle of the field so that Kentucky quarterback Kenny Minchey could walk right into the end zone and claim victory.

Baker has been LSU’s defensive coordinator since 2024 and he’s proven that he is not worth $3.5 million. Paying him that sum was defensible when he was retained from last year, perhaps, but he certainly hasn’t earned it. LSU has enough talent on defense to have put up great numbers against weak offenses like Clemson, Texas A&M, Louisiana Tech and McNeese State; for $3.5 million, the school and its fans and boosters are entitled to a defense which is more than the sum of its parts and a coordinator who doesn’t get his pants taken off by Joe Sloan – who was fired at LSU in the middle of the season after fielding an offense which couldn’t score more than 25 points in any game. Now Sloan puts up 35, with less talent, against Baker’s vaunted defense and LSU’s playoff hopes are finished.

Is Kiffin’s team mathematically out of the picture? No. If he can somehow right the ship and go on a run, LSU can get to the playoffs. An undefeated second half of the season puts LSU at 10-2, and they’ll be a playoff team if they can hit that mark. A 5-1 second-half record puts LSU on the bubble.

Is either scenario realistic? No. Not really.

LSU’s next two games are at home against Mississippi State, a game it can’t lose under any circumstances and shouldn’t, and then at Auburn. So far Auburn doesn’t look like they’re as good as Kentucky is, but Alex Golesh is a very good coach and Byrum Brown, though he’s struggled a bit so far this year, is a big, physical, mobile quarterback Baker has done little to prove he can effectively scheme against. And there is no reason to believe LSU can win road games against SEC teams until Kiffin and staff can prove otherwise.

Should he be able to beat Auburn? Probably. But the trend is LSU has lost eight straight games on the road, and Kiffin has lost two straight at LSU. Breaking that trend at Auburn is the key to preventing this season from becoming an absolute disaster.

Because after Auburn come home games against Alabama and Texas in quick succession, and both of those teams are simply better than LSU is. Alabama struggled for a half with this same Kentucky team, and then after halftime they destroyed the Wildcats as though it was a rent-a-win game. Texas is heavily overrated, but they nonetheless beat Ohio State this year. Who has LSU beaten with a pulse?

In the event that Kiffin can emerge from those four games 7-3, which is an order taller than his team has shown it can handle so far, he then has to go on the road and beat both Tennessee (another mobile quarterback Baker’s defense will have to stop) and Arkansas. That last game is certainly winnable; Tennessee is less so, and the atmosphere for that game will be similar to the one in Oxford earlier this year given that Kiffin left Tennessee high and dry, too, and the people there haven’t forgotten it. Tennessee will be favored against LSU.

What all of this translates into is a 7-5 or 8-4 season, maybe worse. It doesn’t translate into 9-3 or 10-2 and playoff contention.

When Kiffin is getting paid, and everybody around him in this program is getting paid, for playoff contention.

Again, the standard is to make the playoffs more years than not. Kiffin has a seven-year contract and LSU doesn’t have any money to buy out fired coaches, not after the $50 million whopper of a buyout Brian Kelly is getting, so the standard would be to make the playoffs four out of those seven years.

Or rather, four out of the next six, since last night made it extremely likely this year is a failure against the program’s primary goal.

Is that harsh? Well, Kirby Smart makes what Kiffin makes, and Kirby Smart is likely to make the playoffs seven years out of seven. Or at least six years out of seven. Smart is something like 120-14 against teams not named Alabama in his career; he’s 3-7 against Alabama, which isn’t great, but Georgia is always in the top 10 and right now they’re No. 1.

That’s what Kiffin is getting paid to do at LSU.

Is LSU Georgia? Well, there was a time not so long ago when LSU actually looked down on Georgia. That time isn’t now, but LSU historically is a lot closer to Georgia than, say, Indiana.

And given what Curt Cignetti has done at Indiana, there are no excuses to be had for Kiffin and his staff.

Cignetti arrived at Indiana from James Madison, where he’d built a mid-major powerhouse, three years ago. At the time Indiana was THE doormat of the Big 10. Cignetti proceeded to stock up his roster in the transfer portal and went 11-2 and made the playoffs in his first year. Then he restocked his roster in the portal and won a national championship. And then he restocked it again this year and he’s undefeated. Indiana just went to Nebraska, who was undefeated, and won a tough game against a better team than Kentucky.

LSU isn’t entitled to the same results as Indiana with the resources committed to the program? LSU’s commitment to winning in football, and its tradition and environment, completely outstrips Indiana’s. There are no excuses not to be able to do what Indiana has done. Hell, Kiffin did something similar at Ole Miss, which is why he was hired at LSU.

The point here isn’t to whine about one game. It isn’t to melt down. It’s to reframe last night’s game within the big picture and note that Lane Kiffin was not hired to lose to Kentucky, and Lane Kiffin was not hired to go 4-2 against a schedule containing only one opponent ranked before last night.

So far this is underachievement, and with what awaits in the second half of the schedule it looks like LSU will be favored in no more than three of the six remaining games, and if the results go according to the chalk Kiffin will post the same regular season record which got Brian Kelly fired last year.

This is not acceptable. The resources LSU put into the current regime cannot be sustained without a far better output.

Kiffin isn’t getting fired. LSU won’t be buying out any coaches in the next several years. I’m not suggesting anybody lose their job. At this point we’re stuck with these people. Here’s hoping we start getting a whole lot better value for the money we’ve laid out.