Two weeks ago, Ole Miss had arrived. Lane Kiffin finally had his big win. The focus of the previous year, all the money, all the talent procurement, all about making the College Football Playoff, seemed a slam dunk.
On Saturday, Florida players took an Ole Miss logo from its sideline and used it for dunking practice. Ole Miss had not arrived. It was being dunked on.
Barring a miracle of carnage among other contenders, no amount of politicking by SEC commissioner Greg Sankey can save the Rebels. They’re probably done. But ultimately Ole Miss is not set to miss the Playoff because it lost on Saturday to Florida.
It’s probably going to be left out because it lost at home to Kentucky, way back in September. Therein lies the ultimate lesson about the new world of the Playoff, what it takes and why Kiffin and his program didn’t have it this season.
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The game has changed. It no longer requires perfection or near perfection. It requires survival. In the world of mega-conferences, where schedules are more varied, teams need to be built for the long haul, physically and mentally. They can’t put everything into one or two big games but shirk the other ones. They can’t get too up or too down. It’s much more an NFL-style approach: just get in the Playoff.
Ole Miss wasn’t that team this year. But a good example of that is the team Ole Miss beat two weeks ago: Georgia.
Jaxson Dart and the Ole Miss Rebels suffered their third loss of the season on Saturday at Florida. (Matt Pendleton / Imagn Images)
Kirby Smart’s team looked overmatched in Oxford on both sides of the ball. It looked physically beat up and mentally tired from a schedule rated the hardest in the country entering this weekend by ESPN and two other computer models. But as bad as the Bulldogs looked in that game, they still have only two losses and are still alive in the Playoff chase.
Georgia, for all its warts, including the 18-point loss in Oxford, is on the verge of making the Playoff because it won enough big games — Texas, Clemson, Tennessee — and because when it had its come-to-Jesus game at Kentucky, it won it. Just like it survived Florida, which is improving each week, as the Rebels are painfully aware. And Georgia, just to be sure, still needs to beat Georgia Tech next week.
That’s an adjustment for a Georgia program that had not lost a regular-season game in four years.
“Of course, your goal going into every season is not to lose one. (But) with the extended Playoffs, that added a little more leeway,” Georgia guard Tate Ratledge said. “When we saw the schedule, we knew what it was going to be. We were going to play a lot of really good football teams, and we have another one this week. There’s no weeks off.”
GO DEEPER
Ole Miss loses to Florida 24-17 as CFP chances slip away
Well, there sort of was a week off for Georgia, which pulled away from U-Mass on Saturday, 59-21. Tennessee, the biggest winner from Ole Miss’ loss on Saturday, had its own phone-it-in game, 59-0 over UTEP. But both teams have losable games next week, and here’s another illustration of how the game has changed in the bigger and harder SEC: Nobody is absolutely, safely in the Playoff yet.
The only one-loss team is Texas, which has no ranked wins and would be sweating it if it loses at Texas A&M next week. Alabama, Georgia and now Tennessee may be on the right side of the bubble, but one loss between now and the SEC championship may change that.
Oh, and about the SEC championship: Kiffin set himself up for a karmic fall this week when, in his usual admirable honesty, he said he and other coaches wanted to avoid playing in the SEC championship. Get that week off to rest up and not risk a loss that could cost them Playoff seeding or even a Playoff spot. Well, that’s not an issue for the Rebels anymore.
This team is good enough to win the whole thing. It has an elite defensive front, elite receivers and a quarterback in Jaxson Dart who often has looked elite this year — but not the final few minutes of the debacle in Gainesville.
Kiffin will be dinged again for not having what it takes … again. That’s still premature. Kiffin is struggling to close the deal as a coach, but he keeps getting close. He has matured from the coach who talked too much at Tennessee, got fired on the tarmac at USC and wore out his welcome at Alabama. Set aside his past, and there’s a great offensive mind and program-builder, and he’s still only 49 years old.
There’s still a chance of something great happening for Kiffin, and it could still be at Ole Miss, which has a collective head Walker Jones who has made it clear the offseason spending push was about trying to capitalize and then sustain and not about 2024-or-bust.
It doesn’t look like it worked for this year. So it’ll be back to the transfer portal this offseason, and questions will continue about whether that’s truly the best model. They’ll also continue about Kiffin. The jury remains out on that.
What is clear is that for all the talk that the expanded Playoff will devalue the regular season, it’s harder to make it than many thought. There are a lot of good teams. But there are still some mediocre teams too.
And there’s a lesson that Kiffin, Ole Miss and every contender can take: don’t lose to Kentucky.
(Top photo: James Gilbert / Getty Images)
