What Lane Kiffin said about being hated after LSU’s 51-10 win over Clemson
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LSU spent the week before its opener in a Louisiana courtroom and in an exchange of statements with the SEC over the eligibility of former NFL players on college rosters. Lane Kiffin’s first team then beat Clemson 51-10 in Baton Rouge on Saturday night, and he brought the argument up himself at halftime.
With LSU ahead 31-3 and holding a 336-54 edge in total yards at the break, Kiffin finished his interview with ESPN’s Holly Rowe, started to walk away, then came back to the microphone and said, “Imagine if we had pro players.”
Two days earlier, East Baton Rouge Parish Judge William Jorden granted a preliminary injunction barring the NCAA and the SEC from punishing schools that rostered any of the 42 athletes suing for a fifth season of eligibility, which cleared former Ole Miss players Dae’Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris to follow Kiffin to Baton Rouge. The SEC filed its own federal lawsuit against LSU and Kiffin in Alabama that same morning. LSU submitted a 103-man roster on Friday and left the two spots empty.
What Kiffin said the joke would have cost him
Kiffin explained that decision on ESPN’s “College GameDay” hours before kickoff.
“That wasn’t easy, as much as I feel for the players,” he said. “And I believe that you fight for what you believe in. And I believe these kids have an opportunity to play, just like all the other kids around the country that are winning court cases and being put on rosters. But at the same time, I’m the head coach of LSU, and I had to make a decision that is for the big picture of LSU and the LSU football program, with the uncertainties of what potentially could have come by adding them to the roster.”
“I’m just really glad they played the way they did, so that wouldn’t have been the story, because I get it, it would have been the whole story,” Kiffin said after the game. “Even if we won close, kind of ugly, the whole story would have been, man, I screwed the team up by doing this. I said it this morning, you can not agree with it. I’ve been criticized heavily for the last two weeks, and I get that.”
Kiffin said someone asked him afterward if he had really put the halftime line on the air.
“What’s the difference?” he answered. “Everybody hates you. They can’t hate you much more.”
Lane Kiffin, when asked about his halftime comments of “imagine if we had pro players”
Says someone asked him if he really said that..
Kiffin: “What’s the difference? Everybody hates you. They can’t hate you much more” pic.twitter.com/m4OwIOaxHI
— Trey Wallace (@TreyWallace) September 6, 2026
“Imagine if we had pro players.”
Lane Kiffin is not holding back. pic.twitter.com/OzHEZqw1UW
— ESPN (@espn) September 6, 2026
LSU ran for 213 yards before halftime against a Clemson team that finished the two quarters with minus-4 on the ground, and that gap is why the joke played as a joke. The 41-point margin was the worst loss of Dabo Swinney’s tenure at Clemson and the program’s worst since 2000.
Kiffin also pushed back on the idea that the week’s noise reached his players, calling that talk overrated. The two roster spots remain open, and the SEC’s federal case remains pending.
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