Mississippi Rebels vs. Kentucky Wildcats, 3:30 p.m. ET, ESPNU
Want a measure of how truly awful this game is going to be? The two teams combine to land 15 rankings of 100th or worse in the stats tracked by the NCAA. They combine for four rankings of better than 50th. This is going to be an epically bad game.
In fact, it will probably lock up the No. 12 spot in the SEC Power Poll for whomever loses. There are still a few holdouts for the Rebels, but Kentucky could firmly take the "lead" in the "race" if they managed to lose to Ole Miss in this game. And they just might.
If you asked me the difference between these two teams, it would go something like this: Ole Miss strikes me as the replacement for the Vanderbilt and early-era Rich Brooks Kentucky teams, squads that often had some fight but never seemed to be quite on the same level as the other SEC teams. Kentucky strikes me as something like 1999 South Carolina, a team so completely disjointed and dysfunctional that it ended the season 0-11 and bearing only a passing resemblance to a college football team.
Kentucky's only wins come in a too-close-for-comfort victory against Western Kentucky; a two-touchdown win against Central Michigan and a win over Jacksonville State. They have lost three SEC games by at least four touchdowns. Ole Miss has lost just one -- the 52-7 annihilation against Alabama -- but claims only wins against Southern Illinois and at Fresno State.
That's enough. I don't know if either of these teams are going to have the same coaches in 2012 that they have right now, but Houston Nutt will probably be the one holding an SEC win when the dust clears.
Ole Miss 10, Kentucky 3