BATON ROUGE – It was a typical south Louisiana Labor Day weekend, smack dab in the middle of a quiet (knock on wood) hurricane season.
Yet, it was anything but calm on the LSU campus, counting down to the vastly anticipated and heavily hyped 2026 football season opener.
ESPN College Gameday live Saturday morning with former Tigers’ head coach Nick Saban. Guest game prediction picker Louisiana native Lainey Wilson, one of country music’s hottest stars, belting out “Callin’ Baton Rouge.” ESPN panelist Desmond Howard’s prediction that “Clemson loses this game big to LSU.”
And that all was before noon.
Later that afternoon, Baywatch reboot TV series stars Livvy Dunne and Brooks Nader (both with LSU ties) and the famed Budweiser Clydesdales provided a beauties and beasts backdrop for first-year Tigers’ head coach Lane Kiffin and his squad‘s pregame march down Victory Hill.
“I felt like I was back at Mardi Gras,” Kiffin said in the wee hours of Sunday morning after LSU’s stunning 51-10 victory over Clemson Saturday night in his Tigers’ debut.
Not even a 70 percent chance of rain could overcome a 100 percent of a dawn to midnight party.
“It was electric,” Kiffin said.
Literally.
Mother Nature’s pre-6:49 p.m. kickoff lightning show and gully washer mini-monsoon delayed kickoff by almost two hours to 8:41. Few fans, if any, in the Death Valley mob of 102,231, abandoned ship. It gave them extra time to spend with lifelong friends Jack Daniels, Jose Curevo and Captain Morgan.
The fully lubricated LSU faithful wanted to stay for every second of their 11th ranked Tigers’ 41-point season-opening bloodletting over the 23rd ranked visitors. They were determined to revel in a beatdown that aimed a collective middle finger at the sanctimonious national media, blowhard politicians and social media keyboard jockeys who collectively portrayed LSU and the state of Louisiana as bayou scum since the day Kiffin was hired.
First, it was because he had the audacity to advance his career by accepting LSU’s offer last Nov. 30, leaving Ole Miss before the end of his sixth season and the school’s first College Football Playoff run.
Then, in the last two weeks, Kiffin tried to add rookies cut by NFL teams to his roster. It came after those players sued for the right to play because of a mistimed NCAA rule change in June allowing them a fifth year of college eligibility.
A Baton Rouge judge on Thursday granted a temporary injunction that cleared Ole Miss transfers tight end Dae’Quan Wright and defensive tackle Zxavian Harris to immediately play for the Tigers.
Kiffin decided Friday not to include Wright and Harris on LSU’s opening game roster he submitted to the SEC office. Turns out he didn’t need them just yet, a point he slyly made with ESPN sideline reporter Holly Rowe in his field exit interview at the half with the Tigers ahead by 28 points.
“Imagine if we had pro players,” Kiffin verbally jabbed with his team nursing a 31-3 halftime lead.
LSU’s answer to its haters, such as journalistically bankrupt SEC Network blowhard Paul Finebaum (who described Kiffin Saturday as “a 53-year-old man behaving like a 16-year-old”) and Georgia attorney general Chris Carr (who badly wants LSU thrown out of the league), was to beat the snot out of a program that has won two of four College Football Playoff national championship games it has played under 18-year head coach Dabo Swinney.
“I’ve been criticized heavily for the last two weeks, and I get that,” Kiffin said after handing Swinney the worst loss of his career. “My job is what I believe is right, and I believe we were fighting for what was right for those kids.
“I’m just glad we played the way we did, so that wouldn’t have been the whole story. Even if we won close and kind of ugly, the whole story would have been `Man, I screwed the team up by doing this’.”
Aside from new Arizona State transfer quarterback Sam Leavitt throwing an interception on his second snap as LSU’s starter (leading to a 3-0 Clemson lead with game just 92 seconds old), the Ti-gahs surgically carved up the visitors the rest of the night.
They scored 51 unanswered points. Kiffin joined Nick Saban as the only LSU head coach in the SEC era whose team scored 50-plus points in his Tigers’ debut.
Kiffin’s offense, powered by the brilliant playcalling of new O-coordinator Charlie Weis Jr., set a school-record with 38 first downs (spurred by 11 of 16 third-down conversions), rolling for 644 total offense yards (309 rushing, 335 passing on 94 snaps (46 more than Clemson).
Leavitt and Wisconsin transfer running back Dilin Jones each ran for 113 yards, and both scored twice. Also, Leavitt completed 16 of 28 passes for 230 yards and a TD along with his early interception.
“With all the (outside) noise throughout the off-season, we really have done an incredible job of just blocking it out,” Leavitt said. “It’s never been a thought process in the building. It’s not even like we’ve had to hush people. We come to work, put our heads down. . .that’s all we do.”
On both sides of the ball.
Clemson, which gained 71 of its 145 total offense yards on its game-ending TD drive against a field full of LSU defensive subs, was 1 of 13 in third down conversions. The visitors had a measly eight first downs, including just one, along with minus 12 rushing yards, at halftime.
Swinney felt the game was manageable until LSU starting defensive end and Tennessee transfer Jordan Ross scored on a 30-yard interception return for a 17-3 lead with 2:03 left in the first quarter.
“The pick six hurt,” said Swinney of the play in which LSU zone-blitzed a pair of looping linebackers while Ross faked a pass rush and baited Clemson starting QB Christopher Vizzina to throw his way. “That was a killer.”
Ross credited LSU defensive coordinator Blake Baker with the well-timed play call.
“Our defensive coordinator drew it up perfectly,” Ross said. “We ran through it in practice all the time. I just came up with the pick and scored the touchdown.”
From that point, Baker released his attack dogs from every direction. Swinney replaced a battered Vizzina on the last possession of the first half with dual-threat true freshman Tait Reynolds.
LSU’s defense treated him as rudely as Vizzina, who eventually returned to the game in the fourth quarter for more pummeling.
The most encouraging things for Kiffin’s crew heading into Saturday’s home game against Louisiana Tech are the return of missing elements that made LSU non-competitive in last season’s 7-6 collapse. The underwhelming weekly performances and overwhelming lack of progress led to head coach Brian Kelly’s firing on Oct. 26.
LSU now has a starting quarterback who is a legitimate, playmakng dual-threat. It has a defense, as starting linebacker Whit Weeks said last Tuesday, that brings back “a nasty edge. . .dudes flying around and having fun.” It’s a complete team that fed off its highly charged fan base to produce its positive game one return on the school’s estimated $45 to $50 million NIL roster investment and the rebirth of “the LSU swagger,” according to Kiffin.
“Based off the way you came out of camp,” Kiffin said of his squad, “you have a chance to be really good. You got really good players that really fit well together.
“Now we got to do a lot of things to keep winning. Be ready to go back to work tomorrow, and we got to improve.”
Because the team with college football’s highest payroll is mandated to prove its worth every week.
Leavitt and crew wouldn’t have it any other way.
“We just keep grinding,” he said.
Contact Ron at ronhigginsmedia@gmail.com