Alabama head coach Nick Saban talks after NCAA college football practice on Aug. 21, 2014, in Tuscaloosa, Ala.TIDE, TAKE THREE• 1. Alabama is 21-1 in October since the 2008 season, with the lone setback occurring in 2010 at South Carolina.• 2. Amari Cooper’s 43 catches for 655 yards comprise the fastest four-game start in SEC history, topping the 36 catches for 642 yards that Florida’s Carlos Alvarez had in 1969.• 3. The Crimson Tide lead the series with Ole Miss 48-9-2.
Football weekends don’t get any bigger in the Magnolia State.
In two matchups this Saturday of teams ranked among the top dozen in the nation, No. 11 Ole Miss will host No. 3 Alabama and No. 12 Mississippi State will host No. 6 Texas A&M. Don’t go looking for the last time the Rebels and Bulldogs were so highly ranked when hosting such elite outsiders, because there is no such comparison.
“When you’re playing teams like Ole Miss on the road, there are a lot of huge challenges,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said Monday in his weekly news conference. “Playing on the road is a challenge in itself with game management, noise and all those kinds of things, but the biggest challenge is going to be their team and the quality of their team and the things they do as a team. Preparation is really, really important in a game like this.”
The last time Ole Miss and Mississippi State were in the top 15 and faced top-15 teams was in 1953, according to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, when they played each other to a 7-7 Egg Bowl deadlock.