Week 11 in college football allows us to look forward to some exciting conference games.

Saturday will feature a must-see SEC matchup between No. 11 Alabama and No. 15 LSU. With College Football Playoff implications on the line in the last full month of the regular season, what does each team need to capitalize on to take home the win?

No. 3 Georgia will visit No. 16 Ole Miss in a matchup that is expected to keep college football fans locked in. Both teams have dominant defenses, which could end up being the stars of the show Saturday. With the Rebels not having a victory over a ranked opponent this season, a win over Georgia should keep their CFP hopes alive.

Our college football experts preview big games and share quotes of the week ahead of the Week 11 slate.

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Ole Miss’ moment | Changes Indiana made | Alabama-LSU
Quotes of the Week

Is this Ole Miss’ moment?

The jump from good to great in the SEC can be as taxing as shooting par at your run-of-the-mill country club course and then doing it at Augusta National.

It doesn’t happen overnight, and yet, when Lane Kiffin came to Ole Miss, he said he didn’t come to be good. He came to be great. Here’s his best chance yet to make good on that promise when Georgia rolls into Vaught-Hemingway Stadium in a game Ole Miss desperately needs to win to stay in the College Football Playoff conversation.

“We screwed two games up earlier in the year [a 29-26 overtime loss at LSU and 20-17 home loss to Kentucky], and when you do that, you put yourself in situations,” Kiffin said. “So I don’t talk about playoffs normally and championships and all that because I think it really doesn’t matter. It’s about how you prepare and how you play.

“But I told our players, you know … because they hear it all the time, that you still have that stuff [championships and the playoff] alive. And in my opinion, anybody that’s going to win it, it’s going to have to go through Georgia at some point. They’re the premier program in college football.”

The Rebels (7-2, 3-2) have reached heights under Kiffin that haven’t been broached in Oxford in decades, but what they haven’t done is consistently beat the best teams on their schedule. They don’t have any wins over nationally ranked teams this season, which makes this Georgia game so important in the eyes of the playoff committee, and Kiffin is 7-9 against nationally ranked foes since coming to Ole Miss in 2020. Two of those wins came last season against LSU and Penn State, as Ole Miss won 11 games for the first time in school history.

“We’ve kind of put ourselves in a playoff situation for two games in a row now,” said Kiffin, whose team rebounded from the LSU loss with double-digit wins over Oklahoma and Arkansas. “So this would be the third one in a row that we need to win to keep pace.”

The third — and most challenging.

Georgia (7-1, 5-1) hasn’t lost to anybody not named Alabama since the 2020 COVID-19 season when the Bulldogs were beaten by Florida. Georgia is healthier on defense now with top pass rushers Jalon Walker and Mykel Williams back, and in the Rebels’ two losses this season, they gave up 10 sacks.

One of Kiffin’s priorities in mining the transfer portal this offseason was to get bigger and more physical, especially on defense. Ole Miss was punished physically a year ago by Georgia in a 52-17 loss that saw the Bulldogs pile up 611 total yards.

The Rebels have had their struggles on offense this season against SEC competition, which has been surprising. They exploded a week ago in a 63-31 win over Arkansas, but had not scored more than 27 points in an SEC game in their previous four outings. They won’t be 100% on offense against Georgia. Leading rusher Henry Parrish Jr. is out after getting injured last week, and top receiver Tre Harris has been banged up for several weeks with a lower body injury and missed the Arkansas game.

The backbone for Ole Miss has been its defense. The Rebels lead the country with 41 sacks and are one of two SEC teams (along with Tennessee) to rank in the top 10 nationally in scoring defense (13.2 points) and yards per play allowed (4.41).

A key storyline in this game will be what kind of pressure Ole Miss can put on Georgia quarterback Carson Beck, who has been prone to interceptions with an SEC-high 11, all in the past five games. In six SEC contests, Georgia is next to last in the league in yards per rush (3.31), and the Bulldogs have thrown it an SEC-high 232 times in that span.

The biggest change obviously came at the top with coach Curt Cignetti, but Indiana also made necessary investments that allowed Cignetti to compile a roster built to win immediately.

Cignetti brought over a strong collection of James Madison transfers, including standouts like defensive linemen Mikail Kamara and James Carpenter, wide receiver Elijah Sarratt and linebacker Aiden Fisher. He also added experienced players like quarterback Kurtis Rourke, a two-time All-MAC performer at Ohio with 33 career starts. Other than the offensive line, where multiple sophomores start alongside veterans Mike Katic and Trey Wedig, Indiana’s offense is filled with senior starters. The defense has a few sophomores in the back end but features a seasoned front seven with Carpenter, Kamara, Fisher, linebacker Jailin Walker and others.

“All those guys have been multiple-year starters at their prior schools, and they’re older guys,” Cignetti told me earlier this season. “So they’ve seen it all at this point. They’re used to achieving.”

Indiana’s name, image and likeness operation was a source of angst for Tom Allen, Cignetti’s predecessor, who said shortly before his firing, “If you’re not in the [NIL] game, and you’re not on the train, you’re going to get left out and run over.” Like other Power 4 schools making coaching changes, Indiana improved its ability to compete for impact transfers.

“You put yourself in position for success,” Indiana athletic director Scott Dolson told me. “From our end, that wasn’t just a one-time thing. You need to continue to invest and put the resources in and be super smart about that, where we can absolutely affect the trajectory of the program.” — Adam Rittenberg

Alabama: Without question, Alabama must get off to a much faster start on the road against the Tigers than it did in its past two trips — both losses. Especially with a playoff berth hanging in the balance. In a 40-35 loss to Vanderbilt in early October, Alabama trailed 23-7 before clawing its way back into the game. At Tennessee two weeks later, Alabama trailed 14-10 at halftime before losing 24-17. Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer said this week they will try to set up practices so his squad is able to get off to a fast start, and the performances in the past two road games are not from a lack of effort. “You just can’t dig yourself a hole, especially giving the opponent momentum in an environment like we’re going to see at LSU. So it’s critical. We preach it every day.” — Andrea Adelson

LSU: The Tigers have to find a way to finish games. LSU had an entire open date to think about what happened the last time out, a 38-23 loss to Texas A&M in which it blew a 17-7 halftime lead after the Aggies switched to a running quarterback and it could not stop them. Even in its opening loss to USC, the Tigers had a 17-13 lead going into the fourth quarter before losing. The good news for LSU is that it will be far more prepared for Jalen Milroe than Aggies backup Marcel Reed. The bad news for LSU is Milroe is perfectly capable of taking off and running — note his 374-yard passing, 117-yard rushing and four-touchdown day in a win over Georgia earlier this year. — Adelson

Quotes of the week

“I think Jaxson Dart‘s playing as probably one of the best quarterbacks in the country in explosive plays,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said of Dart, who broke Archie Manning’s school record for total offense with 562 yards in the 63-31 win over Arkansas and also threw six touchdown passes. “A lot of respect for how he competes. The guy runs extremely physical, like an SEC running back. … You can tell he’s got a fiery, competitive attitude, just like his coach does, just like Lane does.”

“I like where we’re at. Unfortunately, we have less wiggle room and our backs are to the wall. We’re going to fight each and every day, bite, scratch and claw like you’ve never seen and that continues this week.” — Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer

“Every week presents its own new set of circumstances and so there’s a lot of that going on this week. I’m aware of it. But to get kind of caught up on that and lose your focus would be the kiss of death.” — Indiana coach Curt Cignetti

“It’s a lot of fun. I’ve obviously had a lot of memories there as a player and as a coach and now as the head coach at BYU. Personally, I probably have a different perspective than a lot of other people.” — BYU coach Kalani Sitake on going to play at Utah.

Billy Napier will continue to coach Florida, according to athletic director Scott Stricklin, who put to rest rampant speculation about the embattled coach’s future with the Gators.

In a letter Thursday, Stricklin stressed the need for a “disciplined, stable approach” and asked Florida fans to “continue standing behind Billy and his dedicated team while we work together to build a championship program.”

Napier, in his third season at Florida, is 15-18 with the Gators. After a 41-17 season-opening loss to Miami, he faced increased scrutiny over his job performance — scrutiny that mounted after a 33-20 loss to Texas A&M two weeks later.

Stricklin, however, has been unwavering in his support of Napier, who has repeatedly said he needs time to get the Gator program headed in the right direction.

Back-to-back wins over Mississippi State and UCF helped quell fan discontent, but performances in close losses to No. 7 Tennessee and No. 3 Georgia — Florida held leads in both games — showed progress.

“As we’ve seen these past several weeks, the young men on this team represent what it means to be a Gator,” Stricklin wrote. “Their resolve, effort and execution are evident in their performance and growth each week — building a foundation that promises greater success next season and beyond.”

Stricklin added that he is “confident that Billy will meet the challenges and opportunities ahead.”

The Gators are 4-4 overall this season, including 2-3 in SEC play. They visit No. 5 Texas on Saturday before closing their regular season home for LSU, home for Ole Miss and at rival Florida State.

Much of the progress Stricklin cites has to do with the way Florida’s freshmen and sophomores have played of late.

After veteran quarterback Graham Mertz was lost for the season against Tennessee, freshman DJ Lagway took over as the full-time starter and has played well — leading a 48-20 victory over Kentucky and giving the Gators the lead against Georgia until he left the game with a hamstring injury.

Lagway had been splitting time with Mertz, but his ability to make plays as a dual-threat quarterback has opened up the possibilities for the Florida offense. Lagway is considered questionable for Saturday’s game at Texas.

Freshman running back Jadan Baugh has impressed, too, with 323 yards and five touchdowns.

Sources told ESPN’s Pete Thamel that 70% of Florida’s name, image and likeness money is tied to freshmen and sophomores, and there is a sense that losing Napier would also mean losing Lagway, who chose the Gators to play for Napier.

In an interview with ESPN earlier this season, Lagway’s high school coach, Trent Miller, said Napier “did a great job of getting DJ to commit early to help the process of building that brand with recruits and everybody else around him.”

The buyout for Napier alone would have been more than $26 million, which would have been the second biggest in college football history, behind Texas A&M’s $76 million for Jimbo Fisher last year.

Sources indicated the cost of transitioning from Napier and staff and buying out an incoming coach was estimated internally at $40 million.

There are other factors at play as well. Interim president Kent Fuchs, who returned after Ben Sasse stepped down, hired Napier and Stricklin and wants to see them succeed.

WHEN TOM HOLMOE arrived in Provo to play football in 1978, his understanding of the BYU–Utah rivalry was next to nothing.

He was not then a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and he grew up in Southern California watching the USC–UCLA rivalry with his brother playing for the Bruins. So when the Cougars’ bus rolled up to Rice Stadium in Salt Lake City his freshman year, Holmoe was curious how the atmosphere would measure up. He was redshirting, and BYU had already clinched the WAC title, but the intensity he felt on the sideline was unlike anything he had ever experienced.

“It was a cold day, but it was hot on the field,” said Holmoe, BYU’s athletic director since 2005.

BYU’s six-game winning streak in the rivalry ended that day, and while the Cougars would still be playing in the first-ever Holiday Bowl — back when reaching a bowl game was a genuine achievement — it was a bitter pill for Holmoe to swallow. He remembered a cartoon in a local newspaper downplaying the bowl bid in light of the rivalry loss.

“It was not a great feeling, and that was my first experience,” Holmoe said.

Holmoe went on to win all four games he participated in — three with Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham as a fellow standout on defense — and over the past four-plus decades has become convinced the “Holy War” is as intense as any game in college football.

“I love college football,” he said. “And I think one of the greatest things about college football is the rivalries. I don’t know where BYU-Utah ranks, I just know it’s one of the great rivalries of all time.”

The first meeting took place in 1896, and for most of its history, it was played as a conference game. After starting their early days in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference, the schools moved as a pair to the Skyline Conference (1938), to the WAC (1962) and, finally, to the Mountain West (1999) before the Pac-12 came calling and pried Utah away before the 2011 season, ushering in BYU’s independent era and move to the Big 12 last year.

Those who have taken part in this rivalry over the past 13 years say the lack of conference stakes had no bearing on game day. In fact, Utah’s departure and elevation to Power 5 status introduced a new point of contention between the schools. Still, things were different. They started playing in September instead of November and — for the first time since World War II — took years off.

“I think Utah tried to diminish it a little bit, because now they were in the big leagues and BYU wasn’t, and I think BYU fans felt like they were being dissed a little bit,” said former BYU AD Val Hale, a lifelong BYU fan who is writing a book about the 24 years he spent working in the athletic department. “Utah was trying to say, ‘Oh, this game isn’t that important to us anymore.’ So, I think there was a little bit of offense taken on the part of BYU fans. I think some BYU fans would say that the Utah fans were a little bit snobbish, and were trying to look down their noses at BYU because we weren’t in the Pac-12 like they were.”

Last summer, the future of the rivalry was in jeopardy. Conference realignment has a nasty habit of breaking up rivalries, and while it had already been chipping away at the tradition in Utah, BYU’s move to the Big 12 gave the Cougars less scheduling flexibility and less incentive to schedule a difficult nonconference game.

In a strange twist of fate, however, the Pac-12 collapsing created a domino effect that led to Utah joining the Big 12, reuniting the Utes and Cougars as conference rivals once again. On Saturday (10:15 p.m. ET on ESPN), Utah hosts No. 9 BYU in what could be the most consequential rivalry game for BYU in a generation, as a conference title will result in a berth in the College Football Playoff.

ONE OF THE first things neutral fans might notice from the game is that both teams will wear their home uniforms: Utah in red; BYU in blue.

It stems from Holmoe’s roots in Southern California. For several decades, as UCLA and USC shared the L.A. Memorial Coliseum, they both donned home uniforms. It’s a tradition that went away in 1982 when UCLA started playing home games at the Rose Bowl, but USC coach Pete Carroll brought it back in 2008, despite it being a violation of NCAA rules. The rule changed in 2009, permitting both teams to wear home uniforms, and soon after Holmoe went to his counterpart at Utah, Chris Hill.

“I said, ‘One of the great things about the USC-UCLA rivalry is they play in their home colors for every game. Let’s do it,'” Holmoe said. “And he goes, ‘What do you mean?’ I say, ‘Well, you wear red, we’ll wear blue no matter what the sport is or where the game’s played.’ And so we started this tradition (in 2011), and it’s kind of fun because the color and pageantry of college football comes out.”

For Utah natives like BYU captain Tyler Batty, the game’s importance is ingrained into their consciousness from a young age.

“My earliest memory was probably in elementary school,” Batty said at Big 12 media days this summer. “Just me and a bunch of friends getting together at someone’s house and watching the game. It’s not like you’re really watching that much of the game when you’re 10, 11 years old, but you’re catching on to how competitive it is. It’s pretty legendary.”

Some of the most legendary moments are only tangential to the results.

In 1999, there was an infamous incident in which a BYU fan came over the railing from the stands and attempted to tackle a male Utah cheerleader, who had been running with a flag.

“The cheerleader jumped on top of him and started pummeling him,” Hale said. “Everybody in the stadium — 65,000 people — is watching this. All I could see was someone pummeling someone on the ground. I thought it was an usher.

“So, I went running down the sideline — here’s the AD running down the sideline — and by the time I got down there it had been broken up. I went to talk to the Utah cheerleading coach and he was telling me what happened, and to this day there are still stories out there that I got in a fight with the cheerleader. You know how stories get warped and twisted.”

Another bizarre moment that doesn’t get twisted came in 2012, the year Utah fans rushed the field three times during and after the Utes’ 24-21 upset of then-No. 25 BYU. The first came after fans thought time had expired following an incomplete pass, when there was still 1 second left on the clock. The next came during a 51-yard missed field-goal attempt, which triggered a 15-yard penalty and gave BYU a second, closer field goal try. When that one failed, too, the fans rushed the field for a third time.

UP UNTIL LAVELL Edwards was named the BYU head coach prior to the 1972 season, the rivalry was lopsided in favor of Utah. Then, with Edwards at the helm for the next 29 years, BYU controlled the series.

In 2001, the first year after Edwards retired, BYU took a 10-0 record into the game in Provo and trailed 21-10 with 3:30 to play before Luke Staley, the eventual Doak Walker Award winner, scored two touchdowns in the final minutes as the Cougars sought to become the first nonpower-conference program to reach a BCS bowl. (They would lose three weeks later at Hawai’i and miss the BCS.)

When quarterback Alex Smith signed with Utah a couple of months later, the pendulum swung back in the Utes’ favor. Smith’s introduction into the rivalry was similar to Holmoe’s: He came from Southern California, didn’t know the history and watched the first game, in 2002, from the sideline.

“I think both teams were not very good at that point, but I remember thinking how crazy the game was,” said Smith, who is now an NFL analyst for ESPN. “Sold out and just how intense the game was for both sides.”

When Urban Meyer was named coach at Utah the following year, he turned up the heat on the rivalry, refusing to call BYU by name, referring to them only as the “team down south.”

Come rivalry time, the Utes were 8-2 and needed to beat BYU to win the Mountain West title. The forecast called for a blizzard.

“Just calling it snow wouldn’t do it justice,” Smith said. “It was a complete whiteout blizzard, and our senior running back had gotten hurt, so we were down to a true freshman, I think. I’ll never forget on the sideline, Urban was like, ‘Hey, we’re gonna call your number a bunch. Just hang on to the football.’ I think I had like 24 carries for 40 yards or so, but we won the game 3-0 and it was awesome. Just an ugly, ugly game, but it didn’t matter. What a good drive back to Salt Lake from Provo.”

The shutout compounded the disappointment for BYU, which entered the game having scored in an NCAA-record 361 straight games dating back to 1975 — a streak that has since been passed by Michigan, Florida and TCU.

“It was something we bragged about all the time at the end of every game,” Hale said.

The next year, BYU’s visit to Utah set the stage for one of the best days in Utes history.

“[ESPN’s] ‘College GameDay’ came to Utah for the first time ever. We had a chance to clinch our undefeated season, break the BCS, win our conference and beat BYU all at the same time,” Smith said. “Incredibly special. Sold out crowd again, the whole country is watching, to get the win and the students rush the field and there are sombreros everywhere. Pretty epic win and, again, to do it against BYU made it even sweeter.”

BYU got some measure of revenge two years later with “Beck to Harline,” an iconic finish that saw the Cougars win with an 11-yard touchdown pass from John Beck to Jonny Harline on the final play of the game that became known as the “Answered Prayer.”

Then the Cougars followed that memorable win with another the next year, best remembered for a fourth-and-18 conversion on a pass from Max Hall to Austin Collie, which prompted Collie to deliver a famous line: “Magic happens.”

After Utah moved to the Pac-12 in 2011, BYU had a hard time conjuring that magic again.

“They started to take some of our kids away on the recruiting trail because they were part of a [Power 5] conference,” Holmoe said. “And that was hard on us.”

Utah won the first eight games in the series after leaving the Mountain West, including a 2015 appearance in the Las Vegas Bowl, when the nonconference game was on a two-year hiatus.

BYU ended the losing skid with a 26-17 win in 2021 — when Utah would go on to win the Pac-12 and play in the Rose Bowl — but that was the only meeting in the past four seasons.

Had the Pac-12 remained intact, infrequent matchups likely would have remained the norm. Utah’s move to the Big 12 this summer changed that.

“The state gets wildly excited about that game, and it has been hit and miss the last several years,” Whittingham said. “But now that we’re both in the same conference, and it’s going to be an annual thing. It will be the single biggest sporting event in the state of Utah every year.

WHEN BIG 12 teams gathered in Las Vegas in July, it was Utah that received all the preseason adoration. Utah was selected as the favorite to win the conference, largely in part due to the expected return of quarterback Cam Rising, who led the Utes to Pac-12 titles in 2021 and 2022.

BYU’s Darius Lassiter was complimentary of the Utes at the time, but issued a warning ahead of their arrival to the Big 12.

“I think it’s going to be more of a surprise to them than what they might think,” he said. “… It’s not an easy league at all. There are a lot of good teams here and then we just added three other teams including themselves, so it is not going to be just a walk in the park for them.”

Perhaps he undersold it.

After starting the season 4-0, Utah has dropped its past four and lost Rising to another season-ending injury. The Utes are 1-4 in the Big 12, and their dismal offensive performances led to the departure of offensive coordinator Andy Ludwig. At this point, if the Utes reach bowl eligibility it would be a surprise.

“Certainly the seasons have gone in completely different directions than what was anticipated at the onset,” Whittingham said. “I guess that shows that those preseason rankings and thoughts really don’t mean a whole lot.”

BYU is the inverse example.

The Cougars debuted at No. 9 in the initial College Football Playoff rankings Tuesday, and while there are compelling arguments for why they should be higher, it’s an enviable position for almost the entire country.

Playing spoiler isn’t what the Utes originally had in mind, but it is a powerful motivator.

“To own the state of Utah, to sour out those guys’ season, it would be big for us and the team,” said Utes running back Jaylon Glover, who also levied an expletive toward BYU in an interview with local reporters this week, for which he issued a follow-up apology on social media.

Just as they were for Holmoe all those years ago, the rivalry burns hot. And while pride has been enough to fuel this rivalry, meaningful stakes are sure to turn up the heat.