LSU is headed to the SEC Championship Game.

It’s Tell the Truth Monday, and anyone who says they foresaw that is not telling the truth.

No one foresaw the Tigers winning the SEC West, let alone with 2 games (including 1 SEC game) to play, let alone having to wait a few hours before seeing No. 1 Georgia join them in the title game after clinching the East.

But here we are.

It’s true that the West is not as good as it usually is. But it’s also true that at 6-1 LSU is the only team in the West with just 1 conference loss and it has beaten the only 2-loss teams — Alabama and Ole Miss.

The Tigers are the clear-cut best in the West.

We’ll find out in December how they compare to the best in the East.

The fact that 1st-year head coach Brian Kelly will have LSU lining up in Atlanta on the 1st Saturday in December is one of the most remarkable stories in college football this season.

The truth is that Kelly wasn’t a universally popular hire among LSU followers.

Athletic director Scott Woodward’s choice generally was respected, but the degree of enthusiasm about it varied. The 10-year, $100 million contract opened a lot of eyes.

Some observers weren’t thrilled with Kelly’s age (he recently turned 61) when younger coaches such as Lincoln Riley (USC) and Billy Napier (Florida) were being hired.

But the truth is Woodward chose wisely.

As he sought the right successor after the turbulent Ed Orgeron Era, Woodward found a mature, stabilizing force, a proven winner and a confident leader.

It’s impossible to imagine a better hire under the circumstances. It’s really difficult to imagine one even as good as the Kelly hire.

Kelly has this Tigers team playing for the SEC championship (and potentially more), but he has just scratched the surface of what the Tigers program can be.

He doesn’t even have the maximum number of scholarship players (85) allowed under NCAA rules. Soon he will though, as he takes advantage of the NCAA’s lifting of limits on the size of the next 2 classes.

LSU has the No. 4 recruiting class for 2023 and the No. 2 class for 2024. And the benefits of the victory over Alabama earlier this month and that of the overall success of this season have yet to fully kick in.

It’s true that Kelly’s 1st season has not been flawless.

The Tigers started slowly and mostly played poorly in a season-opening loss to a good but not great Florida State team.

They were outclassed in a blowout loss to Tennessee as Kelly, his staff and their players all had a bad day at the office.

They have allowed every SEC opponent but one (Alabama) to score 1st, forcing LSU to play from behind.

But the Tigers have played better as those games have gone along, just as they have played better as the season itself has gone along.

They are in the position they’re in because they have won 4 games in a row since the Tennessee debacle, beating Florida, Ole Miss, Alabama and Arkansas in succession.

The 13-10 road victory against the Razorbacks on Saturday, which put LSU in position to clinch the West when Bama beat Ole Miss a few hours later, came despite it being the least impressive win during the streak.

On the most recent Tell the Truth Monday, Kelly dismissed the notion of a “trap game,” saying he and his staff would have the Tigers in the right frame of mind for Arkansas even in the wake of the physical, emotional overtime win against Bama.

But clearly Kelly’s team wasn’t in the same frame of mind in Fayetteville that it was in for the game in Tiger Stadium 7 days earlier.

But LSU won.

It won on the road despite not playing its best. It won despite the fact that Jayden Daniels wasn’t effective throwing the ball or running it.

It won for a very simple reason — it was the better team.

And now it has won the West for the same reason — it is the best team in the West. The records prove it.

No one saw it coming.

And the truth is, anyone who thinks they can see what’s coming next — against UAB, at Texas A&M, against Georgia and beyond — would be wise just to watch and see what happens.