The LSU program comes with a lot of expectations that leave little room for patience, and coach Lane Kiffin has already gotten a taste of just how unforgiving Louisiana’s football culture can be in his debut season. And Leonard Fournette, former LSU RB, offered a blunt reminder to the new head coach of the pressure attached to leading the Tigers.
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“People don’t understand the SEC and even LSU—it’s football God. It is God, LSU, then Leonard Fournette, then the Saints,” Fournette said on the Down 2 Business podcast on October 15, whe he was asked how hot the seat gets down there for a coach if they don’t win in the first year or two.
“Understand this, right? You got to understand. See, I know y’all younger than me, so the history, it goes way farther with me than y’all think. I was the first seventh grader to get a scholarship from LSU and Bama, too…The pressure was always on me, bro. I ain’t gonna lie.”
Having competed in the SEC, one of college football’s toughest conferences, Fournette has witnessed firsthand the pressure LSU fans place on the program to deliver results. As a 7th grader, he faced the wrath of the fans and their expectations. Given LSU’s history of demanding results from its head coaches, Fournette isn’t wrong about the pressure, and it was visible during the Brian Kelly era.
Kelly had the reins of the LSU program for 4 seasons and had a record of 34-14, but he did not have any conference or national championship trophies. While he used to get criticized by the fans, the real nature of how gruesome the fans could be came out during the 2025 season, when the Tigers lost 49-25 to undefeated Texas A&M.
When the Tigers were trailing 14–7 in the first quarter, the fans let their frustration out and started chanting, “Fire Kelly.” Despite it being their head coach’s birthday, they showed no mercy and even booed him when he was leaving the field. This game exposed the growing rift between LSU’s struggling program and an increasingly frustrated fan base.
Well, the events that followed this game became the headlines. The news of Kelly being fired came in hot after the game, after they fell 5-3. LSU’s AD Scott Woodward also did not shy away from listing the reason for firing his HC in the middle of the season.
“We had high hopes that he would lead us to multiple SEC and national championships during his time in Baton Rouge,” director of athletics Scott Woodward said in a statement. “Ultimately, the success at the level that LSU demands simply did not materialize, and I made the decision to make a change after last night’s game.”
As for the new head coach of the Tigers, Lane Kiffin’s honeymoon period is officially over now. The Tigers are 4-2 this season, whereas Kelly was 5-1 last season, and the fans haven’t been quite satisfied. They have shown their frustration by ranking Lane Kiffin at the top of the most hated people on the SEC list.
In the data posted by Brad Crawford on October 15, the most negative comments on Reddit have been directed at Kiffin. He has 2.92 negative comments per 1,000 mentions, which is by far the most in the conference, per Gata Data 88.
The fans were excited to get Kiffin on board after his performance at Ole Miss that took them to the CFP. However, in the 6 games of his tenure in Baton Rouge, the results have been much worse than Kelly, whom they paid millions to let go of.
Why wouldn’t LSU fans be furious? The Tigers had already suffered a rivalry loss to Ole Miss, followed by another defeat of 35-34 to Kentucky in overtime. The Tigers plummeted 12 spots to No. 22 in the latest AP Top 25 Poll. Their route to the CFP appears to be on shaky ground right now.