The first game of the 2026 season is less than a week away, and barring any more craziness, we should get to Saturday’s home opener against Clemson without any more distractions.
It’s been a long offseason in Baton Rouge, but LSU certainly isn’t alone. College football has spent months navigating its usual share of chaos.
Now, kickoff is finally here, and for once, the games might actually bring some calm. With that in mind, let’s get into our first Two Truths and a Lie of the 2026 season.
Truth No. 1 – LSU and Lane Kiffin are comfortable being the villains
After the 2019 season, it always felt like LSU was America’s team. There’s just so much to like about this place. The swagger, the stadium, the fact that there’s a live tiger across the street in the shadows of the student section. It’s all incredible, and in 2019, it felt like the entire country got to see it on display week after week.
That’s all gone now.
It started with the hiring of Lane Kiffin, but the scrutiny has only intensified throughout the offseason. LSU’s decision to hire Will Wade added to it before the recent addition of players who had spent time on NFL rosters brought the criticism to a fever pitch.
It’s not a secret that LSU is the villain on a national level, and around Baton Rouge, it’s not a secret that people don’t care.
There’s no moral high ground to rest upon in the world of collegiate athletics. No one cares whether you did things the “right way” anymore, mostly because college sports abandoned any shared definition of the right way a long time ago.
Truth No. 2 – The villain role is not where Kiffin is at his best
The majority of Kiffin’s career has been played in the role of the villain. The chaos and storm that seems to surround him, no matter what logo is on his visor, is nothing new to him.
But familiarity with a situation doesn’t necessarily mean it’s where you’re at your best. That may be the case with Kiffin.
Kiffin’s offenses and teams have found success everywhere he’s been, but his greatest success, both professionally and personally, came at Ole Miss after he turned over a new leaf.
He did the unthinkable and went from being the most hated person in the SEC to one of the most beloved. The same antics critics, once dismissed as immature or childish, became endearing which social media trolled a decade later.
There’s something to be said for finding yourself in a specific place or specific time in your life. That’s what Kiffin had in Oxford. Now, leaving Oxford doesn’t mean he left all his new healthy habits behind, but there has to be some level of intrigue whether he’s leaning back into his old ways as the villain, and how it will impact how consistent his on field, and professional, success has been.
The Lie – 9-3 with this schedule gets LSU in the playoff
No team that’s lost three games in the regular season in the SEC has made the College Football Playoff. It was only two years ago when three different teams from this league were left on the outside looking in during the 2024 CFP selection show.
A lot of people believe moving to a nine-game conference schedule will give the SEC more benefit of the doubt when résumés are compared. However, putting your faith in the CFP selection committee to do literally anything right, let alone logical, is a fool’s errand.
The committee has yet to show that strength of schedule is something they value as much as SEC programs, fans and the commissioner think they should.
What should give SEC fans the most pause when it comes to this year’s batch of potential contenders is that playing the ninth conference game means eight more losses to teams across the league.
That is a mathematical certainty. And, that should be a huge concern when considering those win-loss records will be matched up side by side with other teams from lesser conferences playing lesser schedules.
Texas Tech, for instance, plays one game against a ranked opponent all season (No. 23 Houston). Penn State plays three ranked teams, but none of them are ranked inside the top 13 nationally in the preseason polls.
Keep that in mind when teams finish 10-2, and a team like Texas or LSU finishes 9-3 against a schedule of six to eight ranked opponents.
Logically, Texas or LSU should get in, but logic hasn’t always extended to the way teams from this conference have been evaluated in recent years.
