| Good morning from Las Vegas. LSU and USC fans are pouring in to the city this weekend for Sunday’s crucial season opener at Allegiant Stadium (6:30 p.m. CDT, ABC). The Tigers are down to a 4-point favorite as money continues to come in on the Trojans, with the over/under as of Friday night still a whopping 64.5. This game is a long time coming, the first meeting between the two schools in football in 40 years. Of course, it’s the lingering legacy of the time they didn’t play and instead shared the 2003 national championship — all but certain to be the last split title in college football history — that fans the flames of a rare rivalry. Both teams have a lot of similarities, starting with new quarterbacks replacing just-departed Heisman Trophy winners. For LSU it’s Garrett Nussmeier, and Wilson Alexander has one of his patented centerpiece stories on the young man from Lake Charles who did what rarely happens with college quarterbacks these days: he waited his turn. We’ve got our staff picks for Sunday’s game, always a popular feature. Doesn’t mean our picks are right (Spoiler Alert: mine is LSU 31-24), just that you read them. And while you’re waiting for LSU to kick off, our Sheldon Mickles has his top five games to watch on Saturday. Finally, our Reed Darcey has a story about how LSU coach Brian Kelly is not saying no to stocking up with players from the transfer portal, but he’s definitely trying to make the Tigers less dependent on them. Here is the story in full, one because it’s so good and two, I couldn’t figure out how to get it in the newsletter the regular way (Technology 1, Rabalais 0). ------------------------------------------- When his phone buzzed, Gio Paez was leaving the last class he’d take at Wisconsin. He looked down, answered the call and heard a strong, gruff voice, one that belonged to new LSU defensive line coach Bo Davis. It was March, and LSU needed interior linemen. So Davis reached out to Paez, a 6-foot-3, 305-pound defensive tackle who had entered his name into the NCAA transfer portal. He had spent the previous five seasons playing in the Big Ten, where his job was to plug gaps and stop the run. He wanted to do more. Paez committed quickly, giving LSU a potential solution at the only position that coach Brian Kelly identified as a need ahead of his third set of spring practices with the Tigers. “I wasn't trying to prolong my recruitment,” Paez said. “I wasn't making crazy demands. Like, I'm not really about all that.” Two years ago when Kelly took over at LSU, patching roster holes via the transfer portal was a longer process. In 2022, an ESPN crew interviewed Kelly during its broadcast of LSU’s Texas Bowl loss to Kansas State. The freshly minted Tigers coach looked down from the booth and saw a team of only 39 scholarship players. The rest, in reaction to the coaching change, had either hit the portal or opted out of the bowl game. That offseason, Kelly also needed to hit the transfer portal. He didn’t have much of a choice. Fielding a competitive team in the short-term necessitated an aggressive portal strategy. But, in Kelly’s mind, building a sustainable, long-term talent pipeline required a pivot away from the portal. So, he and his staff have spent the last two offseasons trying to wean LSU off the transfer portal, with mixed results. Ahead of its third season under Kelly, set to kick off Sunday against No. 23 Southern Cal (6:30 p.m., ABC), No. 13 LSU is expected to start only three new transfers. “I think the transfer portal is what I always thought it would be,” Kelly said in July at SEC media days, “in that it can't be strictly need-based. If you're in the transfer portal for need — in other words, you’re filling needs — you haven't done something right in the natural recruiting season.” Each offseason under Kelly, LSU has signed five fewer transfers than it did the year prior. It added 19 transfers in 2022, then 14 in 2023 and nine in 2024. That decline coincided with year-over-year increases in the number of high school recruits LSU decided to sign. Kelly and his staff inked 15 freshmen to their 2022 class, 26 to their 2023 group and 29 to their 2024 batch. So far, LSU has 25 players committed to its third-ranked 2025 class. “It's intentional,” Kelly said Thursday. “Everything that we do is with a purpose.” Under Kelly, LSU has added significant contributors through the transfer portal. Without it, the Tigers wouldn’t have signed Jayden Daniels, Miles Frazier, Mekhi Wingo, Logan Diggs or Kyren Lacy. But LSU also has had a few notable misses. It struggled on defense last season, in part because it was relying on players such as Duce Chestnut, Omar Speights and Denver Harris, a trio of transfers who had disappointing seasons. Then, LSU pursued a pair of high-profile transfers to fill its need at defensive tackle. But Damonic Williams and Simeon Barrow decided to head elsewhere, sparking an offseason debate over whether the Tigers have enough name, image and likeness resources to build a team that can compete at the top of the SEC. Those recruiting whiffs may not hurt LSU like they would have in the past because under Kelly, LSU has worked to slowly build a roster less vulnerable to the whims of the transfer portal. Each of the 2024 team’s foundational pieces — Garrett Nussmeier, Harold Perkins, Will Campbell and Emery Jones — were signed as freshmen and developed in Kelly’s system. “It's a lot harder to do that when they have one or two years remaining,” Kelly said, “and they have other habits that they built somewhere else.” Jardin Gilbert, a Texas A&M transfer, is in line to start at safety opposite sophomore Jordan Allen. Gilbert is a White Castle native who prepped at University High. He started 12 of the last 13 games he played with the Aggies before a shoulder injury cut his true junior season short. CJ Daniels, a transfer receiver from Liberty, is expected to line up in both two- and three-wide receiver sets this season. Last year, his redshirt junior campaign, he tallied over 1,000 receiving yards and scored 10 touchdowns. Paez, a former rotational lineman at Wisconsin, will line up on the interior of LSU’s base defense next to fifth-year senior Jacobian Guillory. LSU also could receive contributions from Jyaire Brown, its starting nickel corner; Zavion Thomas, a receiver and return specialist; and Blake Ochsendorf, a veteran punter. They each gave LSU a quick fix at a position that could’ve used an extra contributor. If Kelly’s roster-building strategy works according to plan, then LSU will use the transfer portal in similar ways across subsequent offseasons. “When you can get to that situation,” Kelly said, “I think that the transfer portal becomes an effective tool. If it's strictly need-based, you're probably in for some rough seas.” ------------------------------------------- Well, that’s all for now, folks. Please with us for all our coverage of the LSU-USC game this weekend and the entire season of Tiger football. Have a great college football weekend, everyone. Scott Rabalais | 