Ole Miss is 100 days away from starting its much-anticipated 2024 season
In less than two months the talking season portion of the 2024 college football season gets underway in Dallas with Southeastern Conference’s Media Days. In 100 days Ole Miss puts the ball on the tee and kicks off the biggest year in the program’s modern history.
The Rebels and Furman are in the on deck circle with the baseball season now officially in the books and the big three sports have but a bow on the 2023-24 athletic calendar.
Lane Kiffin and company got next.
August 31 will officially start Kiffin’s fifth year at Ole Miss — his longest tenured head coaching job — and this season has him squarely in the spotlight with an opportunity to do the one thing he has wanted to do: show he can lead a football team to a championship.
This Fall is the best opportunity Kiffin and Ole Miss have had in a while at making a run for not only the SEC championship but also the College Football Playoffs and the national championship.
An expanded CFP format is adding eight teams this year and the Rebels are a media darling for the postseason. That phrase really does not do the team justice as they are honestly a legit and serious contender to make the 12-team field and also for the SEC title along with Georgia, Alabama and newcomer Texas.
All the pieces are in place for Ole Miss due to one of the best roster retentions any team had this offseason. Add in another top transfer class and you have the recipe for the aforementioned media buzz the Rebel shave garnered since beating Penn State in the Peach Bowl back in December.
Quarterback Jaxson Dart leads the group of returning Rebels for his third and final season in Oxford. Receivers Tre Harris and Jordan Watkins plus tight end Caden Prieskorn and running back Ulysses Bentley IV help form the nucleus of a what is expected to be one of the top offenses not just in the SEC but the country.
A 100 days out means there are plenty of storylines to watch for with Ole Miss leading up to kickoff.
The offense is deserving of all the hype and expectations being placed on that side of the ball but the Rebels defense is returning an equal amount of fire power.
Entering his second season as the Ole Miss defensive coordinator, Pete Golding made sure to keep up with the moves being made by Kiffin on offense and boost up the defense. More specifically the defensive line.
Princely Umanmielen and Walter Nolen lead that charge of splash additions on defense via the transfer portal. That duo lining up with Jared Ivey and JJ Pegues makes for a defensive line that Kiffin and Golden envisioned after last year’s rout by the Georgia in Athens.
The need to have that ‘win the warm ups’ look, as Kiffin put it in his comments post Georgia, is what motivated he and Golding’s offseason efforts in roster building. Mission accomplished from the looks we got during spring drills.
Then there is the high school additions coming in after Kiffin made more strides towards instate recruiting. Bringing in key defensive lineman in Kam Franklin and Jeffery Rush to mix in with the big transfer additions has Ole Miss ranked No. 3 in ESPN’s Newcomer Class Rankings.
Another important storyline to watch throughout the season is how can Ole Miss navigate a schedule that is considerably kinder than in previous years.
No Alabama, Auburn or Texas A&M on the SEC slate this year, or next as the league announced that 2025 will feature the same eight conference opponents but swap locations. The Rebels also will not play Vanderbilt until at least 2026, too.
Losing some of those landmines on the schedule means others take their place. Georgia remains, coming to Oxford, but trips to South Carolina and Florida are added as well as SEC newcomer Oklahoma coming to Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.
It is still late May but the days will start rolling off the calendar faster as the rush towards the season will pick up steam. The new College Football 25 video game, releasing on July 19, will help as fans can play as their favorite Ole Miss player on this year’s team and make their own run through that schedule.
The post Ole Miss is 100 days away from starting its much-anticipated 2024 season appeared first on On3.
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