Scooter Hobbs column: What’s LSU’s next step after winning the Portal Wars?

Published 3:10 pm Saturday, January 31, 2026

They call Lane Kiffin the “Portal King” and he’s certainly living up to it before ever coaching a game at LSU.

He picked up that tag while still at Ole Miss, of course. It’s where he kind of got a head start on most everybody by embracing that new-fangled portal contraption from the start, back when most college coaches were still in denial mode, still yelling at the transfers to “get off my lawn” and vowing to build programs the old-fashioned way, with good honest high school recruits — all the better with the cash having come out from hiding under the table and now clearly above board.

Kiffin, of course, used the portal much to his advantage in directing the Rebels to within one game of a shot at this season’s national championship.

So, now at LSU and the better resources that lured him there,  Kiffin didn’t just win this off-season’s portal war, no sir. He flat-out obliterated it. On paper, at least, the rest were crying “uncle.”

LSU’s No. 1 ranking — the 247Sports website seems to be most reputable and widely quoted — was 86.27 points, probably computer-generated although AI fortunately stayed out of it.

Anyway, that LSU transfer class, 42 players strong, supposedly goes down as the best haul in the relatively short history of this Transferring for Dollars craze.

Regardless of how the numbers were fashioned, it’s impressive for LSU, mostly by comparison.

Ole Miss, the team Kiffin left behind, is No. 2 in the rankings.

The Rebels’ number is 63.62, a distant second.

Would you like to know exactly how distant?

That’s a whopping 22.65 points behind LSU.

How whopping, you ask?

Well, Texas is third (60.29) a mere 3.33 points behind the Rebels. In fact, it gets somewhat jumbled and mish-mashed together as the Tigers look back at a distance at their pursuers.

Kentucky is No. 10 (48.15) and the gap between the Wildcats and No. 2 Ole Miss (15.47) is far less than the gaping hole between LSU and the Rebels.

Honestly, it’s hard to tell what all this means in the quest for instant gridiron gratification.

I’m here doing due diligence on  how it all worked out last year, trying to get a feel for it, and … huh? Wait just a dadgum minute.

Question No. 1: Would you like to know which team had the No. 1-ranked transfer portal class last year?

Question No. 2: Are you sitting down?

Actually, it was LSU … under Brian Kelly and …

So, how’d that work out, anyway?

Upon further review, maybe there’s more to it than just stockpiling talent.

I would have assumed it would have been Kiffin and Ole Miss No. 1.

But the Rebels, who clearly got the most out of their transfers, were rated by 247Sports as the No. 4 portal class last year. Just a hunch, but I’m guessing the addition of quarterback Trinidad Chambliss — a future star but then an unknown from equally unknown Division II Ferris State up in Michigan somewheres — didn’t help the Rebels’ rating much.

LSU probably got more of a ratings bump from Michael Van Buren, an SEC starter at Mississippi State, who clearly wasn’t up to the task of replacing the injured Garrett Nussmeier.

But there’s likely more to it than just evaluating transfer talent (and raising the money to pay them).

Think about this year. Already with 42 transfers and 16 high school recruits coming in, LSU will likely end up with at least 60 or so newcomers. Meanwhile 34 from last year have already transferred out.

That’s more than turnover, it’s pretty close to an entirely new team. And it looks like that’s the way teams will be built in the future.

With that many players, you can afford to make some evaluation mistakes.

The trick in taking a new of boat load of talent each year is turning them into a viable team.

It’s called Team Chemistry, and on the checklist of putting a winning product on the field, it’s probably second behind pure talent.

It’s all the harder when half may be mercenaries, the other half just sniffing a bigger paycheck.

Kiffin obviously did a great job with it at Ole Miss last year.

Back before the portal, Nick Saban was the master of building chemistry. It was no accident.

It will be all the tougher, however, when teams are still getting introduced and learning each other’s names midway through August drills.

But the coaches who can fashion that chemistry quickly will have the big advantage.

For better or worse — probably worse — it’s the new age of college football.

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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics for the American Press. Contact him at scooter.hobbs@americanpress.com