Joel Klatt says the truth about Lane Kiffin and the LSU Tigers

Lane Kiffin and the LSU Tigers are all about one thing, and that thing is business.

Are the Tigers in the business of championships? That's certainly the main reason LSU poached Kiffin from the Ole Miss Rebels. They believe he's a championship-level coach, and what he did for the growth of the Ole Miss program is proof enough of that.

Kiffin can also recruit, and he doesn't seem to care what the circumstances are that bring talent to him. Perhaps he pulled them away from Oxford, Mississippi when he bailed Ole Miss.

Or, perhaps they're a player who tried their hand at the NFL, got into an NFL training camp, but then got cut.

Kiffin doesn't seem to care, and his reasoning, to his credit, is logical.

"At the end of the day, because of these rulings, they’re either going to play for you or they’re going to play somewhere else around the country, so we made the decision to recruit them," Kiffin recently said of LSU's newfound NFL pipeline.

It's all business in Baton Rouge, but is that how you build a championship roster? Buy-in and team chemistry have to still matter a bit, right?

That's, at least, what FOX Sports analyst Joel Klatt thinks.

“I’m not hot on LSU this year as a potential national champion,” Klatt stated on his show (h/t On3). “I don’t have faith in that culture right now. I think it’s a transactional culture.”

Will the LSU Tigers have the culture to win a national championship under Lane Kiffin?

The NIL and transfer portal era is certainly all about transactions, but, interestingly, we're also in the midst of the 12-team College Football Playoff era.

To win a championship, LSU would not only have to win most if not all of the games on its grueling SEC schedule, but then there's the conference championship game and multiple playoff games.

Last season, the Indiana Hoosiers ran the table and played 16 total games. That's basically an NFL schedule, and it takes a ton of grit and heart to git through.

Klatt is not sure LSU will have those two traits under Kiffin in 2026.

I don’t think that they’re going to have the chemistry as a team to go out and actually win a national championship,” Klatt said. “Because to do that, boy, you better be like a rock. You’ve got to have each other’s back.”