The LSU Tigers are the darlings of the college football world again.
Las Vegas loves LSU. FanDuel this week gave the Tigers the third-best odds to win the College Football Playoff along with No. 1-ranked Miami. THIRD best, behind only Georgia and Notre Dame.
The metrics love LSU. After losing to Kentucky on Oct. 10, ESPN’s Football Power Index gave the Tigers about a 28% chance of reaching the CFP. Now it’s nearly 51%, not a major midterm election-like swing, but pretty significant.
Even Nick Saban loves LSU. “Mr. Rat Poison” himself said on “College GameDay” on Saturday that the Tigers are his sleeper pick to win the national championship. We’ll see if he picks LSU to beat Alabama this Saturday, of course.
“Nobody wants to play LSU right now,” college football analyst David Pollack said on his podcast.
Lane Kiffin isn’t buying any of it.
Naturally, he doesn’t want his players to buy what the world is selling about them, either.
“We just show them the polls,” Kiffin said at his Monday news conference to kick off Alabama week. “There’s no rat poison in the polls about us playing well. We just go by that.”
The AP media poll and the USA Today coaches poll both have LSU (6-2, 3-2 Southeastern Conference) at No. 15 going into Saturday’s game with No. 9 Alabama (2:30 p.m., ABC) in Tiger Stadium. Tuesday’s initial CFP rankings had a little more love for the Tigers but not much, placing them at No. 14.
Meanwhile, there’s a lot of love for Alabama (6-2, 4-2 SEC), which is perched way up at No. 5 in the CFP, eight spots ahead of the Tennessee team that stomped the Crimson Tide 26-10 in October.
LSU is not being disrespected. There are reasons to place all four of the Tigers’ Power Four victories on the discount rack.
Clemson (5-3) is the epitome of average. Texas A&M (4-4) has underachieved mightily. Mississippi State (4-4) was without its star quarterback Kamario Taylor. And Auburn (4-4), despite its shocking win at Georgia, has been exposed for the likely 6-6 team it is the past two weeks by LSU and Ole Miss.
So why all of the love for the Tigers? Well, as much as anything, the eye test. LSU certainly looks the part, especially with tight end Trey’Dez Green having returned. The Tigers seem to be, to dust off a vintage line from the Les Miles quote cellar, “coming to health” at just the right time.
If Whit Weeks could somehow get back on the field after breaking his leg Sept. 26 against Texas A&M, the Tigers would get an exponential physical and emotional lift in time for the season’s most important stretch of games.
They really seem to be getting it on offense overall, again with Green’s return a major factor. Sam Leavitt has cut down on the turnovers — zero in the past two wins over Mississippi State and Auburn — and the defense has adjusted to life without Weeks and Dashawn Spears.
If LSU doesn’t have a truly signature win to hang its helmet on, the Tigers certainly have the opportunity. ESPN rates LSU’s strength of schedule as 36th-best nationally but it’s remaining slate as third-toughest. That’s with Alabama and Texas at home, a trip to Tennessee on Nov. 21 and a season finale at SEC bottom feeder Arkansas.
The Tigers’ hopes, ambitions and perceptions are walking a tightrope.
“You’re one week away from everybody saying we’re great, ‘LSU is back,’ if we win this week,” Kiffin said. “If we lose, it’ll be, ‘OK, get rid of the coach.’ ”
Kiffin has to be encouraged that players such as Leavitt are getting his message. Asked Tuesday whether he would watch the CFP rankings come out later that night, Leavitt said: “I really don’t care. We could be one or we could be 50.
“We have to go win games. You have to stay in the moment.”
For as many bouquets being thrown LSU’s way right now, that is the position the Tigers have put themselves in. Because of losses at Ole Miss and Kentucky, LSU may have little margin for error as far as making the 12-team CFP field.
Maybe the Tigers can afford to lose one of their next three against Bama, Texas or Tennessee. But the CFP committee, which played its wild card in its first hand Tuesday with its initial rankings of Alabama and Tennessee, can’t be counted on putting a team with three regular-season losses in the field.
So save the Tigers’ flowers for later. Say, sometime in late January after the CFP championship game in Las Vegas. Paired with a victory cigar from the Joe Burrow collection.
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