{"id":565999,"date":"2026-04-05T12:42:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T12:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/565999\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T12:42:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T12:42:23","slug":"the-clemson-insider-44","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/565999\/","title":{"rendered":"The Clemson Insider"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clemson and LSU will kick off their respective 2026 seasons on Sept. 5, when the two teams face off at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, La.<\/p>\n

CBS Sports made \u201cway-too-early\u201d predictions<\/a> for a handful of Week 1 college football matchups, including the Clemson-LSU showdown.<\/p>\n

CBS Sports\u2019 Brad Crawford picked LSU to beat Clemson, 31-17.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of these teams signed the nation\u2019s top-ranked transfer class, while the other is slotted at No. 66 overall. You can probably guess which one owned the portal,\u201d Crawford wrote. \u201cLane Kiffin is out for blood in Year 1 with the Tigers with a new-look roster and coaching staff in Baton Rouge. Dabo Swinney made necessary personnel changes at his program as well but is running out of opportunities to get back to the top. Clemson hasn\u2019t won a College Football Playoff game since 2019 and has lost three straight season openers. Spoiling Kiffin\u2019s debut at Tiger Stadium is going to be a challenge as a double-digit underdog, the largest spread against Clemson since Georgia (12.5 points) to open the 2024 campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clemson and LSU faced one another at neutral sites in postseason play four times before the two sets of Tigers met in Clemson in the 2025 season opener for their first regular season, on-campus meeting in series history \u2013 what was a top-10 matchup that saw LSU win, 17-10, at Memorial Stadium.<\/p>\n

LSU leads the all-time series against Clemson 4-1, with Clemson\u2019s lone win being a dramatic 25-24 victory in the 2012 Peach Bowl.<\/p>\n

The 2026 opener will mark Clemson\u2019s first trip to Baton Rouge and Clemson\u2019s first time opening a season in an SEC venue since opening its 2016 national championship season with a 19-13 win at Auburn.<\/p>\n

It will also be Kiffin\u2019s first game as LSU\u2019s head coach after he was hired this past November to replace Brian Kelly, who was fired in October.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know Lane professionally,\u201d\u00a0Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney said<\/a>\u00a0in December. \u201cWe\u2019ve texted many times over the years. He\u2019s reached out different times, questions, or whatever. So, obviously he\u2019s a great coach, and that\u2019s a great program. When that time comes, it\u2019ll be a great matchup.\u201d<\/p>\n

CBS Sports\u2019 way-too-early Week 1 predictions also feature some other ACC teams. CBS Sports picked Georgia Tech to beat Colorado (42-17) in Atlanta, Louisville to lose to Ole Miss (38-35) in Nashville, and SMU to beat Florida State (27-20) in Tallahassee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Clemson and LSU will kick off their respective 2026 seasons on Sept. 5, when the two teams face…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[6596,399,6600,6598,398,396,397,6597,99,6599,6601],"class_list":{"0":"post-565999","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-clemson-insider-podcast","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-gymnastics","11":"tag-hero","12":"tag-ncaa","13":"tag-ncaa-football","14":"tag-ncaafootball","15":"tag-noonan","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-track-and-field","18":"tag-wednesday"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}