The SEC is looking stacked once again this season, with plenty of the top teams in the country getting to play each other week in and week out in the toughest conference in college football. Despite some poor showings from teams like Alabama and Florida early in the season, other squads like Ole Miss, Vanderbilt and Oklahoma have been very impressive and look like they will be tough outs this season.
The Rebels have had one of the toughest slates of anyone so far, playing a road conference game against Kentucky in Week 2 before a tough test against Arkansas in Week 3. On Saturday, Lane Kiffin and company will take on Tulane, one of the best Group of Five teams in the nation, in a non-conference tilt.
Things are only getting tougher for Ole Miss throughout the rest of the season, and Kiffin knows it. He has been one of the most vocal coaches lobbying for the difficulty of the conference, and he compared the gauntlet to that of an NFL schedule before the Tulane game, via Dan Morrison of On3 Sports.
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“Kirby (Smart) and I have talked about that a lot,” Kiffin said. “I think that is really something that’s not given much credit to and understanding, and then in the rankings — it’s like the NFL. Every week. Different than the NFL, you go 10-6, 9-7, you make the playoffs, okay, good job. That’s not what happens in this conference. As you go to nine games, it’s going to be more of that.”
There is unquestionably some lobbying coming from Kiffin here, as he wants as many SEC teams in the College Football Playoff as possible and praising the difficulty of the schedule pushes the narrative that the league should have more teams in. His Rebels just missed out on the 12-team bracket last season after dropping winnable games against Kentucky and Florida during the regular season.
After taking on Tulane, Kiffin and company will host No. 3 LSU to close out September. Later in the season, they have road games against Georgia and Oklahoma, so it will be a huge challenge to get through all of that unscathed. However, if Ole Miss does make it to the end of the regular season with two or less losses, it will almost certainly get a chance to make a postseason run in the CFP.