All Lane Kiffin's Ole Miss Rebels need to do next year to make the College Football Playoff is to go 10-2. How very James Franklin of him that would be. In the wake of Kalen DeBoer being hired to replace Kiffin's mentor Nick Saban at Alabama, Kiffin took to social media as the effervescent troll that he is. Never change, Lane. Never change. He reminded us all Ole Miss will not be playing Alabama in 2024.
The only way the Rebels will face the Crimson Tide next season in DeBoer's first year at the helm is in the 2024 SEC Championship Game in Atlanta in very early December. Are Alabama and Ole Miss on the shortlist of teams who could conceivably get to Atlanta? Yes, but there are other SEC teams to worry about including Georgia, LSU and Missouri, as well as Big 12 newcomers Oklahoma and Texas.
When looking at Ole Miss' schedule for next year, the Rebels face virtually no competition in the non-conference. Their hardest game is at Wake Forest. In their eight-game SEC slate, Ole Miss has Kentucky, Oklahoma, Georgia and Mississippi State at home, as well as South Carolina, LSU, South Carolina and Florida on the road. Oklahoma, Georgia and LSU are the Rebels' three hardest games.
Should Ole Miss win just one of those more difficult games, they will go 10-2 and make the playoff.
Looking at next year’s schedule……
— Lane Kiffin (@Lane_Kiffin) January 12, 2024
With the SEC slated to get upwards of four or five teams in, we can count the Rebels as a virtual lock.
Lane Kiffin let everyone know Ole Miss is not playing Alabama next year
While Kiffin could have eventually beaten his mentor head-to-head, he simply ran out of time. Only three Saban proteges ever beat him head-to-head. Jimbo Fisher knocked Alabama down a peg in 2021 when he was at Texas A&M. Kirby Smart avenged the SEC Championship game loss that year with a win in the national championship. Steve Sarkisian defeated Saban in Tuscaloosa in September.
With the SEC going division-less in 2024, no team benefits more by this schedule adaptation than Ole Miss. The Rebels were in the old SEC West, meaning they had to play Alabama, Auburn and LSU every year. Under the current format, the protected rivalry in the 1-7 setup is vs. Mississippi State for the Egg Bowl. Thus, Ole Miss will now only play Alabama every other year unless something changes.
To me, I like the fact that former division rivals can now play for a conference championship in Atlanta. It rewards the two best teams in the SEC every year, without using arbitrary division banners as a means of getting in the way of things. Some years, two teams in the Eastern Time Zone may need to square off. In other years, we might need to see a pair of teams in the Central Time Zone duke it out.
Unless Alabama and Ole Miss finish one-two in the SEC standings, Kiffin will not have to face the Tide.