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.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Drama continued to encompass NASCAR ahead of its championship-deciding season finale as the sanctioning body issued $600,000 in fines and suspended nine team members from three teams on Tuesday for alleged race manipulation at Martinsville Speedway.

The penalties came down after a contentious final battle Sunday at the Virginia track in which Christopher Bell initially qualified for the championship final four, but his move to hit the wall and use it for momentum violated a banned safety rule and was disallowed.

That gave the final spot in this week’s winner-take-all finale at Phoenix Raceway to William Byron.

But, NASCAR was clear in disqualifying Bell that it would take a hard look at the actions other drivers played in the sequence of events as Bell and Byron battled for the final spot in the championship four.

Elton Sawyer, NASCAR’s senior vice president of competition, seemed to stress that punished drivers Ross Chastain, Austin Dillon and Bubba Wallace were lucky not to be suspended.

“In this case we felt we wanted to focus more on the team leadership, something that we haven’t done in the past,” Sawyer said. “But I promise you that does not exclude going forward. We have meetings coming up this week with our drivers and we will get that point across to them and be very clear that when you do anything that’s going to compromise the integrity of our sport, we’re going to react.”

Drivers have been on notice since a 2013 scandal that they are mandated to give 100% at all time and not participate in any race manipulation. It stemmed from the final regular-season race of that season when Clint Bowyer deliberately spun to start a sequence of events that gave teammate Martin Truex Jr. the final playoff spot.

Truex was kicked out of the playoffs — the scandal ultimately caused the closure of Michael Waltrip Racing — and Jeff Gordon was added as an unprecedented additional driver because he’d been robbed of the chance to race for the playoff position. It was after a weekend of crisis meetings between NASCAR and the teams at the playoff-opening race that NASCAR made its 100% rule.

But the manipulation rule is openly flouted at Daytona and Talladega, where the cars from the manufacturers all work together in the draft and when the drivers make their pit stops. There has yet to be a penalty for those instances.

In this latest case, NASCAR determined Toyota driver Wallace faked a flat tire in order to give Bell the leeway to move out of the way and hit the wall. The riding the wall move was banned after Chastain did it in 2022 to earn the final playoff berth.

In the case of Byron, NASCAR ruled that Chastain and Dillon both ran interference to help fellow Chevrolet driver Byron not lose any position on the track that would cost him a spot in the championship.

Sawyer said the sanctioning body considered taking action against manufacturers Chevrolet and Toyota, but there is nothing in the rulebook that would call for the manufacturers to be punished. NASCAR also planned to meet with the leaders of Ford, Chevy and Toyota to discuss the situation.

Because the penalties were issued the week of the season finale, the teams have until Wednesday afternoon to ask for an expedited appeal. The appeals would likely be heard Thursday.

Trackhouse Racing, which fields Chastain’s Chevy, said it would appeal, as did 23XI for the Toyota of Wallace.

“We feel strongly that we did not commit any violations during Sunday’s race,” 23XI said in a statement. The team is currently embroiled in a lawsuit against NASCAR over the charter system and has Tyler Reddick racing Sunday for the Cup Series title.

The penalties issued were:

• A $100,000 fine for Chastain, a $100,000 fine for Trackhouse, and one-race suspensions for team executive Tony Lunders, crew chief Philip Surgen and spotter Brandon McReynolds. Chastain is the defending race winner at Phoenix. The team also lost 50 points.

• Dillon was fined $100,000, as was Richard Childress Racing. One-race suspensions were given to team executive Keith Rodden, crew chief Justin Alexander and spotter Brandon Benesch. The team also lost 50 points. Richard Childress Racing also said it would appeal.

• Wallace was fined $100,000, as was 23XI. The one-race suspensions went to team executive Dave Rogers, crew chief Robert Barker and spotter Freddie Kraft. The team also lost 50 points.

Sawyer had said Sunday that NASCAR would review the Martinsville finish to see if there was indeed any race manipulation with rival drivers helping others that are aligned with the same manufacturer.

But he said he hoped the penalties were harsh enough to curb the manufacturer alliances and race manipulation.

“We looked at the most recent penalty that we had written for an infraction very similar… we wanted to ramp this one up,” Sawyer said, “and we did. We did that in a way that included team leadership and this is something that we felt like we wanted to get our point across that it is a responsibility of all of us…. to uphold the integrity of the sport.”

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Retired NBA great Michael Jordan and his fellow owners of two NASCAR teams went to federal court Monday for a hearing in their antitrust fight against the stock car series over what they say is an unfair business model.

23XI Racing, which is owned by Jordan and three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin, and Front Row Motorsports, owned by restaurant entrepreneur Bob Jenkins, sued NASCAR and chairman Jim France in October after months of tense negotiations over NASCAR’s charter system, which is essentially a franchise model that includes revenue sharing.

The two teams say NASCAR gave all Cup Series teams a last-minute, take-it-or-leave-it offer in September that both 23XI and Front Row refused to sign. The owners contend the charter system limits competition by unfairly binding teams to the series, its tracks and its suppliers, and they called the France family and NASCAR “monopolistic bullies.”

The two teams are represented by Jeffrey Kessler, the top antitrust lawyer in the country, who argued repeatedly they are only asking for a temporary injunction that allows them to compete without the clause that would prevent their ongoing lawsuit.

He said NASCAR has since rescinded the charter agreements offered to 23XI and FRM in September.

“We do not challenge the entire charter agreement. We want a return to status quo,” Kessler said. “We are not seeking a seven-to-14-year argument. Let us operate under the terms they offered for the duration of the (court) case and race under the charter terms for the duration of the case.”

Kessler said NASCAR is fighting the injunction because NASCAR does not believe it has a winnable case.

The fight is playing out as NASCAR heads into its championship weekend, with the title-deciding race set for Sunday in Phoenix with 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick among the four drivers who can win.

After a hearing that lasted nearly two hours, U.S. District Judge Frank D. Whitney said he’d have a decision on 23XI and FRM’s request for a preliminary injunction to be recognized in 2025 as chartered teams by Friday — when cars hit the track in Phoenix to begin preparations for the title-deciding race.

Jordan listened to Kessler’s arguments from the front row of the gallery, and he leaned forward intently for the entirety of NASCAR’s case before the court.

In a brief comment outside court, Jordan said he didn’t think the legal battle would detract from 23XI’s effort to win the championship with Reddick.

“No, I’ve been in situations of disparity. I think the race team is going to focus on what they have to do this weekend, which I expect them to do,” Jordan said. “I think Jeffrey did an unbelievable job today, and I think I put all my cards on the table. I’m looking forward to winning a championship this weekend.”

At issue before the court is 23XI and FRM’s request to be released from a clause in NASCAR’s agreement that prohibits teams from suing the sanctioning body. Both teams have said they will operate as “open” teams in 2025 if they don’t receive the injunction, but even that agreement prevents them from suing NASCAR.

Also, an “open” team is not guaranteed a spot in the weekly 40-car field, does not receive the same amount of revenue as chartered teams, and its drivers and sponsors potentially could leave because they are associated with unprotected chartered teams.

The charter system began in 2016 and has now twice been extended, with the deals signed by 13 organizations set to run from 2025 through 2031.

Christopher Yates, of Latham & Watkins LLP, represented NASCAR and France. He said the teams have plenty of options outside of NASCAR.

“Mr. Jordan had a choice: They could invest in NASCAR, IndyCar, buy another NBA team,” Yates said, “but they chose to invest in NASCAR.”

Yates also disputed the notion that the 13 teams who signed the charter agreements 48 hours before the playoffs began in September did so under coercion, but he used slides that cherry-picked quotes that left out the parts where owners admitted to reporters that NASCAR threatened to kill the entire charter process if it did not receive signed agreements within a very short time period.

“We’re talking about Roger Penske, Rick Hendrick and Joe Gibbs — people who do not get pushed around,” Yates said.

Kessler called Yates’ synopsis a “complete distortion” of the facts.

Kessler also argued that the terms of the new charters potentially could put the two teams out of business, and cause Reddick to leave 23XI even if he wins the championship Sunday.

“We have a potential champion who would be free to leave and we’d never get him back,” Kessler said. “This could put these teams out of business. You can’t go to a stock car team and ask them to become a Formula 1 team.”

Whitney last week denied an expedited discovery request from 23XI and Front Row for NASCAR to produce documents prior to Monday’s preliminary injunction hearing.

“While the proposed discovery requests may help plaintiffs show a likelihood of success on the merits, they are not sufficiently narrowly tailored,” Whitney wrote.

Jordan, Hamlin and Curtis Polk of 23XI were joined by Jenkins and Front Row President Jerry Freeze for the hearing, which is crucial to how next season will proceed for the two teams.

The teams argue that NASCAR would not be harmed by the injunction because the series had planned to have 36 chartered teams and allowing them to compete as chartered teams while pursuing the lawsuit was maintaining the status quo.

NASCAR now says it plans to run 32 chartered teams and eight open cars (instead of four) in its 40-car field each week. Front Row and 23XI currently have two charters apiece that they did not sign, and both have deals with Stewart-Haas Racing to buy one charter each.

Those deals have not closed and NASCAR has indicated it won’t recognize the sales. NASCAR is alleging it is only honoring the 32 charter agreements that were signed in September.

NASCAR contends the two teams don’t meet the requirements for an injunction because they can still compete as open teams and that any damages that they suffer if they prevail in the case can be covered monetarily.