LSU's Lane Kiffin sent a firing warning after past Ole Miss mulligans against Kentucky and Florida

LSU Tigers football coach Lane Kiffin led the Ole Miss Rebels to their first CFP berth during the 2025 season, but a season prior, the team burned its chances to make the CFP field by losing to the Kentucky Wildcats early in the season, and the Florida Gators late. Ole Miss would’ve made the field with just the LSU loss, or even a loss to the Tigers, plus one of the two. Losing both disqualified the three-loss Rebels. To this day, only 10-win three-loss teams have made the field.

USA Today’s John Adams had a warning for Kiffin as he embarks on his Baton Rouge journey: try losing those kinds of games at LSU, and you’ll be let go before you can ever leave in the middle of a CFP run.

“Kiffin has never faced the level of scrutiny that’s coming this season. He’s been in big-time jobs before, but LSU trumps all of that, especially after the way he left Mississippi. Kiffin can’t help but poke the bear. He says things that are unnecessary. He inflamed the Mississippi situation with his comments in Vanity Fair. As much as he likes attention, I don’t think he’s going to love being under the microscope to the degree he’ll be this season. At Ole Miss, he mostly got a free pass for losing to Kentucky in 2024, or blowing a playoff bid that season at The Swamp. Don’t try that at LSU. That’ll get you fired,” Adams wrote.

Kentucky is on the schedule again, and while first-year Wildcats head coach Will Stein engineered great offenses on the Oregon Ducks, a loss to UK would be disastrous. Ditto for games against the Mississippi State Bulldogs, Auburn Tigers, and Arkansas Razorbacks, the latter two programs of which will be introducing new head coaches as well.

With teams like the Texas Longhorns, Alabama Crimson Tide, and Texas A&M Aggies, and the game of the season in Oxford on September 19, Kiffin would immediately put himself on the hot seat with a bad loss.

Lane Kiffin’s contract will keep him at LSU for at least two years

Kiffin signed a seven-year, $91 million contract, so the odds are, even if his seat gets hot, unless LSU completely crashes, we will probably see him in Louisiana until 2028. He’ll be owed 80% of whatever he’s owed at any point if he’s fired.

The Tigers are stuck with the Kiffin show, or the bill, for a long time.