Lane Kiffin has bitten off more than he can chew with an LSU national title guarantee

Every job is different. Lane Kiffin should know this. He has had so many of them. Whenever he leaves a job, he burns every bridge out of town when he departs. The man who coined the term "getting tarmac-ed" kicked it up a notch by leaving Ole Miss in the midst of its first playoff run to date. He left for Magnolia Bowl rival LSU. Optically, it was an awful idea. Only Kiffin would have taken that job then.

Flash forward to this season, and Kiffin is already spouting out empty-calorie nonsense in the form of grandiose guarantees. He went on In The Bayou With Tyrann Mathieu earlier in the week, discussing anything and everything LSU football. It was a mostly positive interview before Kiffin once again drove it in the ditch by making it about himself. This is why he was never going to replace Nick Saban.

Kiffin had the audacity to guarantee a national championship at LSU before he even coaches a game.

“I don’t know how fast it’s going to happen, but we’re going to win a national championship," Kiffin said. "We’re going to have the teams and the rosters back to the way they were playing when they were great. I don’t know how fast. It might not be today, but it’s going to happen."

Kiffin kept buttering Mathieu's biscuit by relaying what Saban told him: "It's the best job in America."

“I feel it in recruiting, too," Kiffin continued. "Now that we’ve got our staff fully here and we know how to sell LSU because we’re meeting with everyone, it’s one of one. It’s what Nick Saban said. It’s the best job in America.”

Let's not lie to ourselves. LSU is a great job, but is it the best one? Historically, programs like Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, and Texas have all been better jobs. Each may have another Power Four team inside the state's borders, but LSU does not have the resources that they do. Louisiana has enough players to sustain high-end excellence, but this cash-strapped state is always at a real disadvantage.

Here is everything Kiffin said about LSU winning a national championship while speaking to Mathieu.

LSU may be a place where teams can win national titles, but they almost always seem to be one-offs.

Lane Kiffin will find out being at LSU does not guarantee championships

One of the things that separates Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio State from many other programs in the country is their coaching staffs do not make light of winning national championships. Year over year, from one generation to another, the great men leading their programs never put the cart in front of the horse. They know how hard it is. Saban may have won six at Alabama, but everyone was a grind.

Kiffin may have been part of a few championship staffs at Alabama and USC during his time as an assistant, but he has never come close to playing for one as a head coach. In fact, his best shot at it to date was last year. Too bad he bailed on Ole Miss when the Rebels needed him most... Under Pete Golding's watch, Trinidad Chambliss and the Rebels won two playoff games to reach the semifinals.

While Kiffin may attract the right kind of talent to field a championship-caliber program at LSU, it will not happen overnight. To be fair, he did echo this sentiment in his comments to Mathieu. For LSU to win its fifth national championship to date, Kiffin will need more homegrown players like Mathieu to come aboard. He was a transcendent talent during the early 2010s. Even then, he still came up short.

ALSO READ: 5 teams Mark Schlabach keeps giving undeserved hype over Alabama in top 25 rankings

Overall, Kiffin seems to have bitten off more than he can chew with this LSU national championship guarantee. LSU is going to win another one at some point, but it remains to be seen if Kiffin will still be in charge. He rarely sticks anywhere for very long. Not that they run off their coaches, but LSU has never been a place where you can sail off into the sunset after 15 years of service into retirement.

Ultimately, Alabama fans cannot wait to see what is in store in Baton Rouge this year. Kiffin faces a unique kind of pressure, one that Kalen DeBoer can ratchet up with an impressive road win. While both of these teams are playoff-caliber, the one that wins in Tiger Stadium later this year will likely punch its ticket into the field a few weeks later. The loser will have to pick up the pieces for 2027.

Kiffin has friends, but he really knows how to make enemies. This game cannot get here fast enough...

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