It’s a fun time for Ole Miss football.
The Rebels were ranked No. 7 in the AP Top 25 and US LBM Coaches Poll and can expect a similar ranking when the College Football Playoff committee releases its initial rankings on Tuesday.
Those rankings will set the stage for the final weeks of the regular season leading up to the official playoff field announcement on December 7.
That’s still a long ways off and Ole Miss will have to hold up its end of the bargain, but that’s not going to stop anyone from making predictions.
There is one prediction Ole Miss fans should hope to see come to fruition.
ESPN senior college football writer Bill Connelly’s latest playoff ranking predictions has the Rebels as the No. 7-seed team and hosting a playoff game against one of the biggest names in college football, Notre Dame.
It would be the Fighting Irish’s first time playing in Oxford and seeing the iconic gold helmets inside Vaught-Hemmingway Stadium would be an amazing sight.
Here’s Connelly’s full hypothetical playoff bracket:
9 Texas Tech at 8 BYU
Winner plays 1 Ohio State
12 North Texas at 5 Georgia
Winner plays 4 Alabama
11 Louisville at 6 Oregon
Winner plays 3 Texas A&M
10 Notre Dame at 7 Ole Miss
Winner plays 2 Indiana
Connelly also conducted a batch of 10,000 simulations of his projected playoff field as a way to forecast what’s most likely to happen. It didn’t turn out well for Ole Miss.
Here’s what his simulations produced:
FIRST ROUND
- Texas Tech over BYU in Provo
- Georgia over North Texas in Athens
- Oregon over Louisville in Eugene
- Notre Dame over Ole Miss in Oxford
QUARTERFINALS
- Rose Bowl: Texas Tech over Ohio State
- Sugar Bowl: Alabama over Georgia
- Cotton Bowl: Texas A&M over Oregon
- Orange Bowl: Indiana over Notre Dame
SEMIFINALS
- Peach Bowl: Alabama over Texas Tech
- Fiesta Bowl: Indiana over Texas A&M
FINALS
- Indiana over Alabama in Miami
Isn’t the Hoosiers beating the Crimson Tide in a national championship football game a sign of the apocalypse?
The entire SEC would lose its collective minds and SEC Roll Call’s “Days without a national title” board wouldn’t be reset.
For the rest of the country, it would be great entertainment.
