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LSU’s faint College Football Playoff hopes were extinguished late Saturday night with a 22–21 loss to Texas.
Arch Manning tossed the game-winning touchdown to running back Raleek Brown with nine seconds remaining, dropping LSU to 6–4 overall and 3–4 in SEC play.
LSU entered Saturday night at No. 21 in the College Football Playoff rankings. The loss dashes its hopes of making the 12-team field under first-year coach Lane Kiffin, and puts into doubt whether LSU will be ranked next week. Overall, the 2026 season will be the seventh consecutive year without a Playoff appearance.
“I get it. Underperformance,” Lane Kiffin said postgame. “It doesn’t matter if the games have been close or if they go down to the last six seconds. I was brought here to win and we need to win more than that.”
Saturday’s loss was the Tigers’ third one-score loss to a ranked team after a 32–24 loss to Mississippi and a 35-34 overtime loss to Kentucky.
Overall, LSU is 0-4 against teams currently ranked in the College Football Playoff top 25.
“I get it. But we’re also down to one play on the final drive to win there,” Kiffin said. “We were 10 seconds away from winning. But I get it. We didn’t come here to take games to the last play.”
Big Investments Gone Awry
It’s been a disappointing season after a public courting of Kiffin last year that ended with him signing a 7-year, $91 million contract last December. The $13 million per year average is third nationally to Indiana’s Curt Cignetti and Georgia’s Kirby Smart. His coordinators, Charlie Weis Jr. (offense) and Blake Baker (defense) are the second-highest paid coordinator pair in the country at a combined $5.5 million. LSU’s assistant coaching staff makes $14.6 million total, and Kiffin’s salary creates one of the most expensive coaching staffs in college football.
On the field, LSU invested heavily into the roster. The Tigers signed the No. 11 ranked high school class and the No. 1 transfer portal class, according to 247Sports, including top-10 transfers in QB Sam Leavitt, offensive lineman Jordan Seaton, and defensive end Princewill Umanmielen. All told, LSU is believed to spend more than $45 million on players, which would be one of the five most expensive teams in the country.
LSU also owes former coach Brian Kelly $54 million over the next six years, although some of that money could be offset if Kelly gets another job.
Salvaging The Season
LSU’s Playoff hopes are dashed, but its schedule does not let up from here. LSU travels to No. 8 Tennessee next Saturday—another school where Kiffin is a villain. He unexpectedly left the Volunteers after one season as head coach to take the same position at USC in 2010. His last game in Knoxville—on Oct. 16, 2021 as the Ole Miss head coach—was one of the most hostile college football environments in recent memory. Fans were throwing so much debris on the field that cheerleaders left the sidelines before the game ended.
As Kiffin walked off in victory he caught a water bottle thrown at him, and threw his visor into the crowd in return.
“We don’t prepare any differently,” Kiffin said. “We’ve got to go back to work, find ways to perform better and execute better, and get the players to play the best they can.”
The Tigers turned over last year’s roster with 63 new players (19 high school recruits, 44 transfers). Saturday’s loss was a disappointing result, in what’s been a disappointing season to-date, but Kiffin maintained confidence that the result isn’t indicative of the program’s trajectory.
“I’m not concerned about that at all,” Kiffin said. “I’m concerned that we lost. I’m not concerned about the future. I said it weeks before when we were winning, that we’ll have better rosters, and that’s no poor reflection upon these players. We just will. We will have been here, we’ll build depth. We won’t have senior days with two scholarship players.”
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