Ole Miss has its eyes on the playoff, but another big goal shouldn’t be ignored.
Matt Zemek, 16powers.com.
Of course the Ole Miss Rebels intend to make the College Football Playoff in 2024. The Rebels have consistently appeared in the top 10 of the post-spring “way too early” rankings for the 2024 season. Ole Miss has the defense, the skill players, and the veteran quarterback in place. We’re all wondering if this team will handle the pressure and lift the Rebels to the 12-team playoff in the first year of this new era for college football. To be sure, Ole Miss fans want the playoff more than anything else, and they should. However, if this season is to produce something really, really special at Ole Miss, there’s another goal the Rebels should – and need to – achieve.
If you follow SEC football closely and are also monitoring the various offseason rankings we have alluded to above, you are aware that another “non-traditional” SEC team being projected to make the College Football Playoff is Missouri. The Tigers, like the Rebels, are a popular pick to represent the SEC in the 12-team playoff. The SEC is the conference best positioned to put four, maybe even five, teams in the 2024 playoff, and Missouri is part of that group alongside Ole Miss. Georgia and Alabama are right there in the mix as well. Tennessee might have an outside shot. LSU has appeared in some top-15 rankings, indicating that the Tigers are seen as a true playoff contender by a lot of college football analysts this year. If we are strictly talking about the playoff, Ole Miss is merely one of several schools with a good chance of making the playoff.
However, when you look at those various schools, Ole Miss is exceptional among them – and not in a good way. Where do you think we are going with this discussion? Can you guess? Take 10 seconds? What are we about to reveal about Ole Miss which is an annoying, lingering reality for the people of Oxford? Okay, time’s up: Ole Miss – unlike Georgia, Bama, LSU, Tennessee, and even Missouri – has never been to the SEC Championship Game. That’s right. That’s how the Rebels are exceptional among the SEC’s main College Football Playoff contenders for 2024.
We all understand why the Rebels have never been to Atlanta on the first Saturday of December. In the SEC West, Alabama or LSU – sometimes Auburn – would have a much better team than the Rebels. Alabama is a dynastic power. LSU, when coached well, has elite Louisiana talent which creates such considerable upside for that program. Auburn cares a lot about football and has been able to assemble awesomely talented teams at times over the years to bust up the Alabama-LSU duopoly. All of that is quite understandable as an explanation for Ole Miss’s Atlanta roadblock.
However, here is where the conversation and the historical record become especially frustrating and burdensome for Ole Miss fans: Mississippi State has made the SEC title game. Arkansas has made the SEC title game. Since the SEC Championship Game was born in 1992, Ole Miss is the only original SEC West school to not appear in the Atlanta showcase. Texas A&M hasn’t been there, but the Aggies didn’t join the SEC until 2012. Ole Miss has had 32 chances to make the SEC title game and is 0 for 32, joining only Kentucky and Vanderbilt from the SEC East as the three SEC schools to bear that unique burden and own that track record of failure since 1992.
Without mentioning any other details, it stands to reason that if Ole Miss – playoff or not – can’t make the SEC Championship Game this year, in this season, it will rate as a massive missed opportunity and something which will sting the grownups in the Grove. If Ole Miss can’t check that box, this season will be incomplete in a very real sense. Let’s say the Rebels miss the SEC title game, make the playoff as a No. 11 seed, and get wiped out in the first round. Will that be a fully successful season? The Rebels would certainly like to make sure they make a stop in Atlanta along the way. If they lose in the first round of the playoff but make the SEC title game, they will rightly say they accomplished everything they reasonably could have.
But now, here’s the extra detail which makes it even more urgent for Ole Miss to get to Atlanta (in December) for the first time: The divisional roadblock – which has made it harder for the Rebels to play in the SEC title game – is now gone. The SEC’s move to a 16-team league with Texas and Oklahoma has been accompanied by a move to a division-less conference. East-West geographical matchups are being thrown together in what feels like a more “national” conference rather than a regional one. We can see the big window of opportunity for Ole Miss when we look at the 2024 schedule.
The Rebels do not have to play Alabama this year. That alone gives them a better shot at the SEC Championship Game. The Rebels miss Texas A&M, which could be sneaky-good under highly-regarded head coach Mike Elko. The Rebels miss a dangerous Tennessee team in the SEC East. They also don’t have to play a dangerous Missouri team which, as we noted above, is a top-10 team in the eyes of a lot of analysts.
Being liberated from the SEC’s divisional structure gives Ole Miss one of the most favorable conference schedules it has ever faced. Ole Miss being a top-10 team is a reflection of both the team’s talent and the favorable schedule.
The Rebels’ three biggest games in 2024 are a road trip to Baton Rouge to face LSU, followed by home games against Oklahoma and Georgia. If the Rebels can win two of those three games, the fact that they don’t play Bama or Missouri gives them a real chance to finish 11-1 overall and 7-1 in the eight-game SEC schedule, which should translate into a trip to Atlanta.
Everything is in place for Ole Miss. All that remains is for Lane Kiffin, Jaxson Dart, and the rest of the Rebels to do something they haven’t done in any of the past 32 college football seasons. It’s time to make the playoff in Oxford, but it’s also time to book a December trip to Atlanta.
