LSU-Ole Miss Magnolia Bowl kicks off the meat of the SEC schedule

You ever been to a really good steakhouse? You know, the kind with leather seats, dim lighting, faint hint of cigar smoke from decades past? At the finest steakhouses, you’re treated royally at every stage of the meal, from the pouring of the wine to the warm napkin-covered bread to the bisque and the iceberg wedge that you’ll convince yourself counts as a salad. It’s all glorious, but you’re not here for soup and leaves. You’re here for the meat.

Friends, we are now at the meat of the SEC schedule. This here, right now, is like the moment in the steakhouse experience — vegetarians, bear with us, but you know the feeling too — when your server is approaching with your perfectly cooked entrée. You can smell the aroma, you can hear the butter sizzling, you can feel the heat of the plate. It’s almost time to start carving.

The heavyweights of the conference are going at each other full-on now, and pretty much every single week from here on out has major conference-title and playoff implications … starting down on the bayou Saturday evening.

In the latest installment of the Magnolia Bowl, No. 9 Ole Miss (5-1, 1-1 in conference) faces off against LSU (4-1, 1-0) with massive stakes for both schools. If this isn’t an elimination game for Ole Miss — which already has a loss to Kentucky on the ledger — it’ll do ‘til another one comes along. For LSU, this game gives the Tigers a chance to elbow their way into the conference-title conversation. It’s not quite a playoff play-in game, but it’s within sight of one.

Both teams bring big-game quarterbacks into the matchup, and to LSU coach Brian Kelly, that’s essential. “If we’ve seen one thing happen this past week, the quarterback is driving this,” Kelly told Paul Finebaum earlier this week, “whether it’s at Miami or at Vanderbilt or any of the programs that are successful right now. The quarterback is essential to drive these programs.”

He knows from hard experience what Mississippi’s Jaxson Dart can do; last year, Dart threw for 389 yards and four touchdowns in a 55-49 win over the Tigers in Oxford. And the guy calling signals for LSU that day is working on Sundays in Washington now. But Jayden Daniels’ replacement, Garrett Nussmeier, is handling the job just fine, leading the SEC in attempts, completions and touchdowns this season.

“Like all LSU teams, regardless of who the head coach is there, they’re extremely talented,” Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin said earlier this week. “Really explosive on offense. I think Nussmeier is really talented, really good. He has a good release.”

Like all longtime SEC rivalries — these two teams have played 112 times — the Ole Miss-LSU tilt is shot through with drama, from mysteriously malfunctioning game clocks to season-wrecking upsets. Ole Miss comes into this year’s version with a reputation for suffering sudden, catastrophic injuries precisely at the exact moment in the game where an injury timeout would benefit Ole Miss. (“The timing on some of the injuries — it’s a really bad look for college football. And it’s not what this game is about if what it looks like is accurate,” South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer said last week after Ole Miss players tumbled like dominoes during key turning points of their game.)

Kelly sidestepped the question of faked injuries in a way that dumped responsibility for monitoring it right in the SEC’s lap. “There is a policy in place that was implemented by the commissioner relative to sportsmanship,” he said earlier this week, “and if there was any faking of injuries in a deliberate action, the SEC would take action on that. I can leave that up to the SEC and let them evaluate that.”

Kiffin, meanwhile, is facing one of the most significant games of his four-plus years at Ole Miss. His offensive accolades and portal wizardry are beyond dispute; his ability to win The Big One on the road remains very much an open question. A victory in Death Valley wouldn’t necessarily go a long way toward the playoff — Ole Miss still has No. 18 Oklahoma and No. 5 Georgia ahead — but it would help establish the Rebels as a legitimate threat to break up the Texas/Georgia/Alabama trifecta atop the SEC.

For Ole Miss, a victory over LSU would also go a long way toward erasing that ugly loss to Kentucky. “In loss, in games or life, you figure out a lot about yourself or your team,” Kiffin said. “It can be very defining. [Losses] can [work] both ways. They don’t always work. They can spiral.”

Just like grilling a fine cut of meat, there’s no way for a team to hide its weaknesses now. Your skill is your game, and the heat will expose your flaws. And it doesn’t get any hotter than Death Valley at night.