Apparently Clemson should just stay home. Somebody might want to tell Dabo Swinney.
By Gary McDaniel/Clemson Sports News
Well, this should be easy.
Clemson might as well save the gas.
Don’t bother loading the equipment truck. Don’t bother sending the buses down I-85. Somebody call Dabo Swinney and tell him the game has apparently already been decided.
Because if you have listened to enough national conversation surrounding Saturday night’s Clemson-LSU opener in Baton Rouge, you might come away thinking Clemson is traveling to face the 1985 Chicago Bears, the 2001 Miami Hurricanes, the 2019 LSU Tigers and the Kansas City Chiefs — simultaneously.
LSU has Lane Kiffin.
LSU has the shiny new roster.
LSU has the transfer portal haul.
LSU has Tiger Stadium at night.
LSU has the hype.
LSU has the No. 11 ranking.
And Clemson?
Well, Clemson is apparently just happy to be invited.
So…
You’re telling me there’s a chance?
Yeah.
Actually, we are.
And maybe a considerably better one than some people want to admit.
Welcome to the LSU All-Star Invitational
Let’s acknowledge the obvious first.
LSU is loaded.
Nobody at Clemson Sports News is pretending otherwise.
The Tigers from Baton Rouge enter Lane Kiffin’s first season ranked No. 11 in the AP poll. LSU’s own athletics department describes its incoming group as the nation’s top-rated transfer portal class, highlighted by the No. 1-rated transfer quarterback in Sam Leavitt, the No. 1 edge rusher in Princewill Umanmielen and the No. 1 offensive tackle in Jordan Seaton.
Basically, Lane went shopping.
And apparently somebody forgot to give him a spending limit.
This isn’t so much a traditional college football roster construction project as it is what happens when you hand somebody a controller in dynasty mode, turn off salary restrictions and tell them to start scrolling through the available-player screen.
Quarterback?
Got one.
Elite tackle?
Add to cart.
Pass rusher?
Sure.
Receivers?
Keep scrolling.
Defensive backs?
Throw a couple in there.
Anything else?
How about trying to bring players back after they had already signed with NFL teams?
Because, naturally, LSU somehow found itself right in the middle of that circus too.
Former Ole Miss tight end Dae’Quan Wright was waived by Cleveland with an agreement to join LSU if eligible, amid lawsuits challenging NCAA eligibility rules. Kiffin publicly defended LSU’s pursuit of former professional players. The SEC then adopted its own restriction against players returning after signing professional contracts, only for a Texas judge to temporarily block that conference rule days later.
Only in modern college football.
And somehow, only Lane Kiffin could arrive at LSU and within months have us debating whether an NFL preseason participant might need directions back to a college dorm room.
Is that proof LSU cheated?
No.
And we’re not going to call something cheating without evidence.
Is it an absolutely perfect illustration of the Wild West nature surrounding this new LSU operation?
Oh, absolutely.
Welcome to Baton Rouge, where apparently the roster-management motto is:
If he still has a pulse and a judge says he might have eligibility, call him.
And Then There’s Lane
Of course, none of this would be quite as entertaining without Kiffin standing in the middle of it.
Lane’s departure from Ole Miss wasn’t exactly a quiet resignation followed by a farewell luncheon and a fruit basket.
He left Ole Miss for LSU as the Rebels were preparing for their first College Football Playoff appearance, producing one of the messier coaching divorces in recent memory. Kiffin wanted to continue coaching Ole Miss in the postseason after accepting the LSU job, but Ole Miss declined. His departure became such a spectacle that angry Ole Miss fans showed up at the airport as he left Oxford.
Now LSU gets Clemson in Game One of the Kiffin Era.
Perfect.
Because nothing says stability quite like opening your tenure against a coach who has been at the same school since George W. Bush was president.
Remember That Dabo Guy?
This is where the national narrative becomes especially amusing.
Apparently Dabo Swinney suddenly forgot how to coach football.
Yes, Clemson went 7-6 last season.
It was Clemson’s worst season in years.
The Tigers started 1-3.
Things went sideways.
Nobody is hiding from it.
But Clemson also won four straight games to close the regular season, and the defense held four consecutive opponents below 20 points during that turnaround.
And last we checked, Swinney’s résumé wasn’t confiscated at the Baton Rouge city limits.
Entering 2026, Dabo Swinney is 187-53 as Clemson’s head coach.
Two national championships.
Nine ACC championships.
Seven College Football Playoff appearances for Clemson.
And since 2015?
Clemson is 32-13 against AP Top 25 opponents.
Against AP Top 10 teams?
14-11.
That .560 winning percentage against Top 10 opponents since 2015 is something only a handful of programs nationally can match.
But please.
Continue explaining how Clemson is going to be overwhelmed by the moment.
Dabo Swinney has coached national championship games against Nick Saban.
He has beaten Alabama twice.
He has beaten Ohio State three times.
He has won playoff games, Orange Bowls, Fiesta Bowls and conference championships.
He has coached against future Hall of Famers and actual Hall of Famers.
He owns a 22-14 career record against College Football Hall of Fame coaches, according to Clemson’s 2026 program records.
Yet somehow he’s supposed to walk into Tiger Stadium Saturday night, hear “Callin’ Baton Rouge,” see some fireworks and suddenly forget which direction the offense is going.
Okay.
But LSU Beat Clemson Last Year!
Correct.
They did.
LSU came into Memorial Stadium ranked No. 9 last August and beat No. 4 Clemson 17-10.
Nobody needs to rewrite history.
But perhaps we should actually remember the history.
Clemson had the football at the LSU 15-yard line late in the fourth quarter with an opportunity to tie the game before LSU got the stop.
Clemson forced two turnovers.
Clemson recorded eight tackles for loss.
LSU finished with 354 total yards.
It was 17-10.
Not 47-10.
Not 57-3.
Not some evidence of an enormous talent chasm separating two programs.
Seventeen. To. Ten.
And that LSU team went on to finish 7-6.
Which makes the coronation surrounding the rebuilt 2026 version even more interesting.
Are the new Tigers more talented?
Probably.
Could they be dramatically better?
Absolutely.
But you know what else they could be?
A collection of extraordinarily talented players playing their first real game together under a brand-new head coach.
Funny how that part gets left out.
You Don’t Assemble Chemistry in the Transfer Portal
This is perhaps Clemson’s biggest opportunity.
LSU has accumulated an enormous amount of talent.
Accumulating talent and becoming a football team, however, are two different things.
Kiffin has a new quarterback.
New offensive pieces.
New offensive linemen.
New defenders.
A new coaching structure.
A new system.
And an entire offseason spent hearing how quickly all of this is supposed to work.
Clemson, meanwhile, walks into Baton Rouge with something LSU cannot purchase from another program:
institutional memory.
Clemson knows Dabo.
Dabo knows Clemson.
The standard may have taken some punches over the last several seasons, but it didn’t disappear.
This is still a program that has won three national championships overall, including two under Swinney; has seven CFP berths; and, from 2015 through 2025, went 126-27.
The funeral might be slightly premature.
Clemson Has Been Here Before
Here is another inconvenient little statistic for the “LSU is simply too much” crowd.
Clemson enters 2026 having not lost to the same opponent in consecutive seasons since 2014.
That’s twelve years.
And under Swinney, Clemson is 26-12 when facing an opponent that defeated Clemson in the teams’ previous meeting.
Apparently Dabo keeps receipts.
That might be relevant Saturday.
Because there is no mystery surrounding what happened last season.
LSU walked into Clemson’s stadium and beat Clemson.
Period.
Now Clemson gets the return trip.
At night.
In Baton Rouge.
Against a higher-ranked team.
With everybody talking about LSU.
With everybody talking about Lane.
With everybody talking about the portal.
With everybody talking about Clemson like the Tigers have become some cute little regional ACC program hoping to hang around until halftime.
If you know anything about Dabo Swinney’s career, you know what normally happens next.
He uses every bit of it.
Every ranking.
Every prediction.
Every slight.
Every television segment.
Every person explaining that Clemson’s best days are behind it.
By kickoff Saturday, that Clemson locker room will probably believe nobody outside Pickens County thinks they can win.
Whether that’s actually true almost doesn’t matter.
Dabo will make them believe it is.
Nobody Is Saying This Will Be Easy
LSU deserves to be favored.
LSU deserves the hype.
Leavitt is enormously talented.
Seaton could be an elite tackle.
Umanmielen can wreck a game off the edge.
Whit Weeks is one of the best linebackers in college football.
Trey’Dez Green presents a nightmare matchup.
Tiger Stadium at night is one of college football’s great environments.
Lane Kiffin can coach offense.
Nobody needs orange-colored glasses to understand any of that.
What we’re questioning is the idea that Clemson should somehow be intimidated by it.
That Clemson has no answer.
That LSU simply rolls out its collection of five-stars and transfers and Clemson politely steps aside.
That’s where this gets ridiculous.
LSU may very well win Saturday night.
But Clemson winning would not be some Appalachian State-over-Michigan, once-in-a-generation event.
It would be Dabo Swinney beating a highly ranked opponent.
You know…
something he has done over and over and over again.
The Pressure Isn’t Really on Clemson
And here is where this game becomes fascinating.
Think about who actually has the pressure.
Clemson?
The Tigers are No. 26 in the AP poll.
The national expectations have been lowered.
People have spent months explaining what Clemson supposedly isn’t anymore.
LSU?
Different story.
LSU hired Lane Kiffin to win championships.
LSU put together the nation’s top-rated transfer class.
LSU has been marketed like a portal-era Death Star.
LSU is ranked No. 11.
LSU is playing at home.
LSU already beat Clemson last year.
This is the grand unveiling.
Lane Kiffin’s LSU.
Saturday night.
Tiger Stadium.
ABC.
6:30 Central.
National television.
Imagine the fourth quarter.
Imagine Clemson is still standing there.
Imagine Sammy Brown and that Clemson defense have turned the game ugly.
Imagine the score is 20-17.
Imagine LSU’s shiny new roster suddenly feels the weight of 100,000 people wondering why the coronation hasn’t started yet.
Then tell us which sideline feels the pressure.
So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance?
Yep.
We sure are.
Maybe Clemson gets beaten.
Maybe LSU really is every bit as good as advertised.
Maybe Kiffin assembled college football’s newest superteam and Saturday night is merely the beginning.
But before everybody starts engraving LSU’s name on trophies, there remains this mildly inconvenient issue:
They still have to play Clemson.
They still have to play Dabo Swinney.
They still have to deal with a program that has spent the better part of the last decade hearing somebody explain why the next opponent was finally too talented, too physical, too fast, too deep or too good.
Alabama was too good.
Ohio State was too good.
Notre Dame was too good.
The SEC was too good.
The playoff stage was too big.
The dynasty was supposed to end about six different times before it actually slowed down.
And now Clemson is being told LSU has too much talent.
Maybe.
But games aren’t played on transfer-portal ranking pages.
Championship rings don’t make tackles.
NIL valuations don’t block defensive ends.
Preseason polls don’t convert third-and-eight.
And hype sure as hell doesn’t tackle anybody.
Saturday night, LSU will have the crowd.
LSU will have the ranking.
LSU will have the transfer stars.
LSU will have Lane Kiffin.
LSU will have virtually every shiny new toy college football’s modern era can provide.
Clemson?
Clemson gets to bring a two-time national championship coach, a chip on its shoulder and four quarters to remind everybody that the Tiger Paw still carries considerably more weight than people suddenly seem willing to remember.
So go ahead.
Pick LSU.
Tell Clemson how impossible it is.
Tell Dabo his run is over.
Tell those Clemson players they’re walking into an NFL roster dressed in purple and gold.
Tell them they don’t belong.
Please.
Dabo probably appreciates you writing his pregame speech for him.
So you’re telling me there’s a chance?
Oh, there’s a chance.
And Saturday night in Baton Rouge, Clemson gets four quarters to show everybody exactly how big that chance really is.
