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Five two-loss teams remain in the SEC. All five still have legitimate chances of making it into the College Football Playoff, but unless unfathomable chaos occurs over the next two weeks, a third loss would squash any of those team’s chances of making the Playoff. 

The SEC Championship game will feature at least one two-loss team, and while the game would be an opportunity to pad the resume, it could also turn into an elimination game. Therefore, it’s not hard to come to the conclusion that finishing the regular season with two losses and avoiding a trip to Atlanta would be the best-case scenario.

For Ole Miss, it is exactly that.

The Rebels are currently in the Playoff if the season ended today, and they’ll remain in the 12-team field if they close out the season with wins at Florida and against Mississippi State in the Egg Bowl. If Ole Miss were to play for the SEC title, well, that could create a nightmare scenario, and one head coach Lane Kiffin would like to avoid at all costs.

“I’ve talked to other coaches, so I’ll just kind of give you the feeling from some other coaches that. They don’t want to be in it,” Kiffin said regarding the SEC Championship game. “You know, the reward to get a bye [ in the CFP] versus the risk to get knocked out completely. I mean, that’s a that’s a pretty big — that’s a really big risk.”

“I think it has ended up being a very unique situation of all postseason sports, the way that system is set up there. How you could go to [the SEC Championship] and get knocked out [of the CFP race]? And if you don’t go [to the SEC Championship game], you’re in.”

Lane Kiffin Stood At A Podium In Georgia With A Goal For The Future, Now It's Time To Make Good, Beat Georgia

Lane Kiffin is hoping Ole Miss wins out and avoids the SEC Championship game, as he should. (Photo by Jacob Kupferman/Getty Images)

As Kiffin said, unique is the only way to describe the current situation regarding the SEC title game and the College Football Playoff. This is the first time in the history of the Southeastern Conference that teams are trying not to play for a conference championship. 

Not wanting to play for a conference title, and openly admitting it, has put Urban Meyer’s brain into a pretzel.

“I’m shutting you out, because I can’t even think like that,” the former national championship-winning coach said while his co-host, Rob Stone, explained Kiffin’s comments on ‘The Triple Option.’

“What do you (mean), you hope you don’t go to the championship game? Like, I don’t, what do you like, you go and then you eat dinner afterwards? You get up in the morning, as you’re driving to work, do you say, ‘Boy, I hope we don’t win the SEC Championship.’ I mean, that doesn’t compute.”

Not wanting to play for a title may not compute for Meyer, but that doesn’t make it wrong.

Ole Miss would very likely get into the CFB Playoff if they close out the year with just two losses. (Photo by Andy Altenburger/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Ole Miss, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Alabama, and Texas, the only one-loss team in the SEC, still have paths of making it to the College Football Playoff. In fact, it’s almost a certainty that four of those six will be in the field of 12, and picking up a third loss could be the difference in a team getting into the Playoff or sitting on the outside looking in.

The keyword in that last sentence is ‘could.’

With this being the first year of the 12-team playoff, we do not know what the selection committee will do when it comes to potentially punishing teams that lose their conference championship games. 

While there isn’t enough time in the day to break down each potential scenario, the one for Lane Kiffin and Ole Miss is relatively straightforward. The Rebels’ home loss to Kentucky earlier in the year is, without question, the worst loss of any SEC contender. Adding a third loss on top of a home loss to the Wildcats and a loss against an average LSU team could, and likely would, end Ole Miss’ Playoff dreams.

There isn’t much computing needed to play that out in your head.