BATON ROUGE — Newly hired LSU football coach Lane Kiffin thanked school administrators Monday for trusting him with “one of the elite programs in all of sports,” and kicked off his Tigers tenure with a pledge to return the team to a championship level.

Kiffin, 50, left Ole Miss on Sunday with the Rebels poised to enter the College Football Playoff in a matter of weeks. He said his mentors told him he would forever regret not taking the LSU job.

“I can sum it by saying this: This place is different,” Kiffin said. “And having watched this place for a long time, having been on the other sideline in this stadium, this place is different, and that’s why we’re here.”

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LSU has recent national championships in football, women’s basketball, women’s gymnastics and baseball. Former football coach Brian Kelly, fired in October, was the first LSU coach since Gerry DiNardo left in 1999 to not win a national title.

As LSU athletic director Verge Ausberry pursued him, “I just felt that passion and that alignment," Kiffin said. From Gov. Jeff Landry down, the state seems to have one objective: “The No. 1 thing is to get LSU football back to the national championship level where it was before.

Kiffin said he consulted his former bosses Nick Saban (at Alabama) and Pete Carroll (at Southern California) about whether he should leave Ole Miss after a half-dozen years and take a job with Southeastern Conference rival.

“Over the six years there, we had other opportunities to leave, and never did,” Kiffin said in a news conference at Tiger Stadium. “There was only one we’re leaving for.”

Kiffin said Ole Miss fans harassed him as he departed Oxford. Video showed several jeering at him at the airport and the coach said others tried to run him and his son off the road en route. It wasn’t entirely clear whether he was joking.

“It’s the passion of the SEC,” Kiffin said. “They don’t go to the airport and say those things and try to run you off the road if you’re doing bad.”

Kiffin has been on the LSU opponents’ sideline several times of his career, including three times with Ole Miss. The home team has won each gave over the last six years.

“I’ve coached a lot of places and a lot of road games. There is nothing like being here on the other sideline,” he said. “Now we have that intensity on our side.”

While Kiffin is running the football program, interim coach Frank Wilson will serve as head coach for whatever bowl game participates in.

Kiffin’s family visited Baton Rouge in November to see whether it might be a place it would want to live. He said he didn’t want to make the decision for it since he rarely gets away from the football field.

“You don’t really know anything except the stadium,” he said. 

LSU has promised Kiffin a significant amount of money to attract players, and the coach said that went a long way to helping him decide what to do. He said he let agent Jimmy Sexton negotiate his $13 million annual salary without telling him what the numbers were so he could concentrate on recruiting and retention.

“The No. 1 thing is to get lsu football back to the national championship level where it was before,” Kiffin said. “I don’t care what your system is. If you don’t have players, it doesn’t work.”