The gambler folds

Fourth and one.

It’s exactly this call Lane Kiffin is getting $13 million per year to make.

Make it, and LSU essentially ices the game and escapes a meh performance in Lexington with a win. Come up short, and Kentucky has a short field to either tie or win a game that, if we're being honest, it deserved to win.

So what did Kiffin do with 1:46 left and his stumbling Tigers clinging to a 27-24 lead?

He punted.

He put the outcome in the hands of Blake Baker and the defense.

It’s a decision Les Miles would make. Ed Orgeron would make. Brian Kelly would make. Let's face it, it's the decision most coaches not named Saban or Belichick would make.

But that’s not the decision Kiffin was brought here to make.

Kiffin—the eccentric risk-taker and offensive savant who sees the game in dimensions that elude the rest of the football-loving world—played it safe.

LSU didn’t need to become the most despised team in the SEC and clean out its vault for the safety dance.

It’s not the decision boosters were expecting when they ponied up to field a $50 million roster.

Kiffin, dice in his hands and up by three, punted … and crapped out.

Kiffin went against his gut—and the analytics—and Kentucky went all Sherman through Atlanta to tie the game.

Kentucky won, 35-34 in overtime, because Will Stein, Big Blue’s first-year coach, had the stones to go for two—for the second straight game—in overtime.

Why it matters: LSU’s second loss of the season, both conference setbacks, all but knocks the Tigers out of the national playoff chase.

Reality bites: Their only shot is running the table and, let’s be honest, that’s not going to happen.

• Not with the deficiencies on one of the most expensive rosters in college football history, particularly along the offensive line.
• Not with a schedule that has remaining games against Alabama and Texas, and a road trip to Tennessee.
• Not when LSU loses to a Kentucky team that is, on paper, inferior—by a lot.
• Not when Kiffin talks himself out of making the decision he was hired to make.

Here in the real world: Is it fair to expect Kiffin to be a miracle worker and take a team to the playoffs in year one?

• No, but Curt Cignetti did just that at Indiana, of all places.
• No, but such is life in the new world of college football where NIL and annual player free agency allow a program to do in one year what it used to take three to five years to pull off.
• No, but playoff elimination before Halloween—not in year one, not with so many riches invested and not when Kiffin has been given everything he’s asked for—is hardly an acceptable reality.

The big picture: Kiffin earned his swashbuckling reputation as the hunter at Florida Atlantic and Ole Miss. He's now the hunted at LSU. Kiffin knows that—it's why he took the job. He's still quirky, but in Lexington, Kiffin lost his swagger.

The bottom line: We’re one loss away from once again asking, “When does baseball start?”