Here’s what we know right now:
- Florida State beat Notre Dame, and if you look at the rest of their schedule, they may not lose again.
- Mississippi State was off.
- Alabama came back from a shaky win at Arkansas by throttling Texas A&M.
- Ole Miss dispatched with a Tennessee team that’s probably a year or so away from being good.
- Auburn was off, but has South Carolina next week
Here’s what else we know:
2013 Week 8 AP Poll pic.twitter.com/f3aKaKJto2
— College GameDay (@CollegeGameDay) October 18, 2014
There is a lot of football to be played — take next week, when Ole Miss has to visit LSU in a night game. Ole Miss maybe has the best defense in the country right now, and LSU is in a down (rebuilding) year. (Sucks for me, because I put money on them in Vegas in August.) But LSU’s record at home in night games? 201–59–3 since 1960. You could potentially see a loss for Ole Miss there — and if they get that one, they have Auburn a week later.
The only possible major college game that could be two undefeated teams from this point on would be the Egg Bowl (Mississippi State vs. Ole Miss) on November 29th, but right above you see the possibility of two Ole Miss losses. If they win both of those, though, it’s Presbyterian and Arkansas before the Egg Bowl. Presbyterian is a pretty good-looking win, and Arkansas seemingly cannot win in the SEC under Bret Bielama — but that said, they will eventually. Those are three games where you could see Ole Miss trip. Not an easy road.
Alabama has Tennessee and LSU as their next two games — with both on the road. Not easy, but if you saw that 59-0 team winning, they should get through them.
Mississippi State has Kentucky, Arkansas, and UT-Martin before November 15th. Seemingly three wins there.
On November 15th, then, you could have a Mississippi State at Alabama game that’s conceivably No. 1 vs. No. 3, or something like that. Game of the year right there — and its outcome would determine whether the Egg Bowl became “The Game Of The Decade.”
Interestingly, it was basically the same weekend in 2012 that Alabama lost to A&M and started to mint Johnny Manziel:
… at that moment, it seemed hopeless for Alabama (losing that late in the season), but because of what happened in future weeks, they made the BCS Championship and won it.
Alabama’s won the last two games vs. Mississippi State by scores of 38-7 and 20-7. This is a different Mississippi State Bulldogs team, for sure — but if Alabama gets by Tennessee/LSU and Miss. St. gets by Kentucky, Arkansas and UT-Martin, you can be sure this one will have a lot of hype.
If Ole Miss starts losing, you could see a situation where the four-team playoff would be the winner of Alabama-Mississippi State, Florida State, another team from the SEC West, and perhaps Oregon (they have Cal, Stanford, Utah, Colorado, and Oregon State — those all look winnable, and will seem better if Arizona becomes a 10-win team).
You just hope Dak Prescott is grounded for a potential showdown in Tuscaloosa:
