After absolutely destroying the Vanderbilt Commodores by a 59-point margin in Nashville last weekend, the Alabama Crimson Tide are firmly entrenched as the best team in college football. However, Nick Saban's team plays host to the Ole Miss Rebels on Saturday and, well, that hasn't always been an easy task for the team from Tuscaloosa in recent years.
The 2014 battle between the two teams went Ole Miss's way in Oxford and, in follow-up, the Rebels won again in 2015 while scoring a mind-blowing 43 points in Tuscaloosa. The 2016 match-up did go Alabama's way, but in the same breath, it wasn't quite as easy as many anticipated and that led to Nick Saban putting an interesting quote into the works on Wednesday.
In short, Saban indicated that Ole Miss may just have "the ultimate disrespect" for his team.
Alabama enters this week's match-up as a four-touchdown favorite (yes, you are reading that right) and absolutely no one believes that Ole Miss can challenge them on the road. Still, there might be something to the feeling that the Rebels might have when it comes to competing and, sometimes, all it takes is a belief that an underdog can compete and, potentially, win.
Nick Saban is a master of this kind of quote but that doesn't make it any less interesting.