Can Lane Kiffin and LSU save their playoff hopes? - ESPN

For LSU, the goal of last Saturday's Tiger Walk was, as always, to go viral on social media. In this case, Lane Kiffin strolled, pregame, to Tiger Stadium flanked by celebrities (Kevin Costner) and former star athletes for the school (Shaquille O'Neal, Angel Reese, Paul Skenes and Olivia Dunne).

«The whole thing is that you create a program with people watching… [who] say, 'That place is cool. I want to go there,'» Kiffin said Monday.

It worked. Unfortunately, by the game's conclusion, a different kind of Tiger Walk was getting views as well — Tiger fans exiting the stadium during the fourth quarter of Alabama's resounding 31-13 victory over LSU. The only bright side was that the volume of the booing decreased with each departure.

LSU is 6-3 in Kiffin's first season and still in search of a high-quality win. Critics, whom Kiffin has seemed capable of creating with ease, have saddled up. The pressure is mounting.

Or, as a videoboard outside the Tigers' locker room put it this week: «When you win, everybody loves you. When you lose, everybody has an opinion… WELCOME TO LSU and THE DARK SIDE OF BEING THE VILLAIN!»

This is the dichotomy of LSU football nine games into Lane Kiffin's tenure.

The hype, the fanfare and the ability to win the attention economy have never been greater. Even before Kiffin decided to leave Ole Miss for the Bayou, and leave his Rebels team to compete in last season's College Football Playoff without him, the sport has been consumed by this coach and this school.

The quotes. The controversies. The slow descents off private jets set to music. The hand-wringing. The court cases. The roster poaching. The bidding wars. The expectation of championships.

And yet the on-field product feels like the same old,