Lane Kiffin's Pleas For Patience Will Fall On Deaf Ears In Baton Rouge And Beyond

New LSU head coach Lane Kiffin has had an interesting start to his tenure in Baton Rouge.

While everything from a team infrastructure and roster construction standpoint has been rock solid, he has said and done some things that could be deemed questionable from a PR perspective.

For starters, his exit from Oxford after spurning Ole Miss in the midst of a playoff run for LSU has been the topic of many a conversation, and while Tigers fans obviously aren't begrudging their new potential savior, the rest of the college football world likely doesn't feel the same.

Then there are all of his weird social media antics that have carried over from his days with the Rebels.

From making duck faces with designer sunglasses in the club level of an LSU baseball game to taking shots at Carson Beck while playing pickleball with the Cavendar twins, and even his weird foot fetish video disguised as a family trip to the Bahamas, his once-charming social media presence is now wearing thin on the public at large.

At a recent press conference following a spring practice session earlier this week, Kiffin may have had another "foot-in-mouth" moment as he addressed the media.

As he stood at the podium, the first-year LSU coach preached patience, saying it takes time to build a program to an elite level.

"Things don't happen overnight," Kiffin explained. "It takes a lot of work to get a program up to an elite-performing (program) level."

With all due respect to coach Kiffin, that's BS.

This isn't a program that needs any sort of building. This is LSU.

Brian Kelly was fired because he was vastly underperforming relative to the resources that were being provided to him.

Kiffin himself left Ole Miss because it's easier to win in Baton Rouge than it is in Oxford – or just about anywhere else, for that matter.

This was a top-ten roster with regard to talent in 2025, and it's only gotten better with the addition of the number one transfer portal class in the country.

The 2026 roster will be one of the most expensive in college football (rumored to cost more than $40 million), and Kiffin has everything he needs to hit the ground running right out of the gate.

This team is built to win in 2026 and Kiffin took Ole Miss to the College Football Playoff last year with less, so spare me.

And don't try to bring up my thoughts on Curt Cignetti and Indiana as a "gotcha" moment.

You can read that whole article here for context, but I basically said that Cignetti is the exception rather than the rule when it comes to turning a program around as quickly as he did.

I stand by that, but LSU isn't Indiana nor is it a program that needs turning around, for all the reasons I just listed.

The Tigers winning less than nine games and not making the playoffs would be an abject failure on the part of Kiffin, and don't let him try to tell you otherwise.

Most of the commenters can see through Kiffin's words as well, calling out everything at his disposal and shutting down his pleas for patience.

Kiffin's words will fall on deaf ears in Baton Rouge and beyond.

Every loss will be magnified, and the noise will get loud quickly if his teams aren't able to perform up to their price tag.

That's the reality of the modern era of college football; it's all transactional at the end of the day.

If patience was really what Kiffin wanted, he could have and should have just stayed in Oxford.

Instead, the magnifying glass is out, and he will have to put up or shut up.

The clock is already ticking in Louisiana, and time is no longer on Lane Kiffin's side.