It’s a rivalry of deep Southern pride, colors and smells.

Alabama vs. Ole Miss is about so many wonderful things.

Even its nickname, the “SEC’s Most Southern Rivalry,” brings images of fun, rambunctiousness, tailgating all over Tuscaloosa and getting your fill in The Grove.

It’s a snappily dressed kind of rivalry colored half crimson, half cardinal red and navy blue.

It’s the snapshots of yesteryear, with Joe Namath and Archie Manning firing darts at Bryant-Denny Stadium and Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, and the pictures of the present with Bryce Young and Jaxson Dart doing the slinging now.

The Crimson Tide vs. the Rebels has everything a college football fan could want in a rivalry, except for one thing: balance.

Bama and Ole Miss have clashed 65 times since it all began in 1894. The Tide have won an astounding 53 of those meetings, leaving the Rebels to sift through the breadcrumbs of their 10 measly wins in the series. There have also been 2 ties to go along with the decades of Ole Miss heartbreak as the Rebels have seemed to gasp for air, just trying to keep up with all those stacked Alabama teams.

Mostly, and unfortunately for Ole Miss, this is a rivalry where Alabama has been supposed to win and has won.

But not all the time. There have been exceptions sprinkled through the decades.

There have been upsets. There have been the days when Alabama was supposed to win and didn’t, and even a few when Ole Miss was supposed to win and didn’t.

This Saturday afternoon in Oxford, a resurgent Rebels program that sports an 8-1 record and is in contention for the SEC West title will likely be a double-digit underdog, despite facing a Crimson Tide team that is 7-2, on the outskirts of contention for a trip to Atlanta and coming off another road loss. Still, the oddsmakers see Bama, they see Ole Miss, and they envision what’s happened for most of this rivalry happening again.

The Rebels might just be the better team overall right now, but if they prevail on Saturday it will be called an upset, like the ones that were hard to uncover in this series but that are there. Trust us, they are, and they surely set off wild celebrations in Oxford, like the one that would swallow The Grove whole if Ole Miss is able to pull it off this time.

In the spirit of what could happen on Saturday, here are the 10 biggest upsets in the history of the Crimson Tide-Rebels rivalry. And for dramatic effect, we’ll go in inverse order, from the 10th-biggest upset to the biggest one of all.

10. 1933 — Alabama 0, Ole Miss 0

Yes, we’re starting with a scoreless tie. Zero points being scored on this early October day at Legion Field in Birmingham could be called an upset in itself, but we’re calling the result itself an upset because this was an Alabama team that won the SEC championship with a 7-1-1 overall record and a 5-0-1 mark in the conference, the tie against Ole Miss being the Tide’s only SEC blemish.

Meanwhile, the Rebels were OK in 1933. They went 6-3-2 overall and were 2-2-1 in league play. But OK is all Ole Miss was while Alabama was a kind of a special team, and  yet the Tide couldn’t manage a single point in the 1st SEC game in program history.

The reason? Alabama fumbled the ball 7 times. It couldn’t get out of its own way and thus couldn’t find the end zone. The Crimson Tide only managed 179 total yards, wasting a dominant defensive performance that saw the Rebels gain a paltry 33 yards on the day. The final score might have been a tie, but make no mistake: Ole Miss escaping Birmingham without a loss was a victory in itself.

9. 1997 — Alabama 29, Ole Miss 20

OK, the Rebels were barely ranked, sitting at No. 25 coming into this late October matchup in Oxford. But in this unlikely scenario when Ole Miss is ranked and Alabama isn’t and the Tide win, we’ve got to include this one in our countdown. Not only was Bama unranked, the Tide simply weren’t very good in Mike DuBose’s 1st season in Tuscaloosa, going 4-7 overall and 2-6 in the SEC.

But in a rivalry in which Bama has rarely been the underdog, it played that role well on this particular afternoon in Oxford. The Rebels seemed to have things under control at halftime, taking a 14-7 lead into the locker room. But the Tide exploded for 22 points in the 2nd half to stun the home crowd and dance off with the upset victory over a Rebels team that would finish 8-4.

It was DuBose’s 1st win against a ranked team at Alabama, and it earned its place on this list because the Tide didn’t win another game the rest of the season. Ole Miss, so used to being the annual underdog against Alabama, clearly didn’t handle its role as favorite very well.

8. 2014 — Ole Miss 23, Alabama 17

Alabama had spent the previous decade beating up on Ole Miss, but on this early October afternoon the 11th-ranked Rebels put a stop to the madness by knocking off the 3rd-ranked Crimson Tide. Yes, the game was in Oxford and Ole Miss was strong that year, it was ranked and ready to finally beat Bama.

But that didn’t mean it had to happen, right? No, it didn’t, and sure enough the Tide took a 14-3 halftime lead and looked to be on their way to an 11th straight victory over the Rebels. But Ole Miss gathered itself and played like a team possessed in the 2nd half, outscoring Bama 20-3. The Rebels sealed the thrilling comeback win late in the 4th quarter when Senquez Golson intercepted a Blake Sims pass in the end zone.

This was Alabama’s 1st true road game of the season, and it showed. But the fact that the Tide rebounded, won their next 8 games and made it to the College Football Playoff just elevated the level of this October upset. And while the Rebels were talented in 2014, they still ended up losing 3 SEC games that season and 4 games overall.

7. 2015 — Ole Miss 43, Alabama 37

Putting the 2014 Rebels victory on our list automatically means we have to include the following year’s upset in Tuscaloosa, and to give both upsets their proper due they really need to go together. So that’s what we did, and what Ole Miss did during its 2-year run of success against Bama is shatter the belief that it could never slay the Tide. It could, and it did. Again.

And this time the Rebels pulled it off at Bryant-Denny Stadium, at night, against a Tide team that came in ranked 2nd in the nation and would run the table after this night, leading to Nick Saban’s 4th national championship in Tuscaloosa. You better believe this one, like the upset the year before, was more than worthy of being on this list.

Bama rolled up 503 yards of total offense, with 29 1st downs. The Tide only had 4 penalties all night, so that’s not why the Rebels roared back and stunned Bama in primetime. What did it was turnovers, the ones forced by Ole Miss and the ones committed by the Tide, who lost the turnover battle by a staggering 5-0. A stat like that will sink you most of the time, and it did that night.

6. 2002 — Alabama 42, Ole Miss 7

The teams’ rankings that day at Bryant-Denny were almost a wash, with Alabama at No. 24 and Ole Miss at No. 21. Add in the fact that the Tide were at home and you might shrug your shoulders at Alabama beating Ole Miss for the 11th time in 12 meetings. But it’s the sheer margin of victory that elevated this admittedly mild upset to something zestier.

Bama was solid that season under Dennis Franchione but was far from unbeatable, losing 3 times overall and twice in the SEC. And while Ole Miss ended up falling apart that year, going 7-6 overall and 3-5 in conference play, the Rebels were still ranked on that mid-October afternoon in Tuscaloosa.

Ole Miss’ only points of the day came in the 1st quarter, before Bama’s defense bullied the Rebels the rest of the way. While that was taking place, running back Santonio Beard was being a beast, tying Shaun Alexander’s record of 5 rushing touchdowns in a game to help the Crimson Tide cruise to the homecoming victory.

5. 1963 — Alabama 12, Ole Miss 7

In the only game in the rivalry not played in the states of Alabama or Mississippi, the Crimson Tide outlasted the Rebels on New Year’s Day 1964 in what was known as the coldest Sugar Bowl in history. No, children, the Sugar Bowl hasn’t always been played in the warm, cozy confines of the Superdome. Snowplows had to be used to clear the frozen field at Tulane Stadium before the game.

So while it was technically 1964, this was the tail end of the ’63 season. It was also the 1st meeting between the rivals since 1944. A junior quarterback named Joe Namath couldn’t help the Crimson Tide that day either because he had been suspended about a month earlier — a fact that by itself puts this Crimson Tide victory in New Orleans on our list.

Bama was ranked 9th coming into the contest with the 7th-ranked Rebels, so by ranking this was indeed an upset. Throw in Namath’s absence and the frigid weather, and the Tide were going to have to grind it out to have a shot. That’s exactly what Paul “Bear” Bryant’s team did, getting 4 field goals from Tim Davis and a dominant defensive effort to hand Ole Miss its only loss of the season.

4. 2001 — Ole Miss 27, Alabama 24

Neither team was ranked, and this flawed Crimson Tide squad ended up going 7-5 (4-4 in the SEC) in Dennis Franchione’s 1st season. But the Rebels were just as ordinary in 2001, finishing 7-4 overall and also 4-4 in the conference. But the recent history of the rivalry put this one on our list, because Ole Miss had lost 10 in a row to Bama going into the mid-October showdown in Oxford.

But on this afternoon, the Rebels finally had enough of the losing. Bama looked to be in charge and on its way to an 11th straight win in the series, except it forgot to finish. Ole Miss struck for 13 points in the 4th quarter, taking the lead with 46 seconds remaining when quarterback Eli Manning hit Joe Gunn on a 3-yard touchdown pass.

The Rebels held the Tide to 15 1st downs and outgained Alabama 430-363. Clearly, this long-awaited win was no fluke, and clearly Ole Miss was sick and tired of hearing about its streak of losses to the Tide. Manning threw for 325 yards as David Cutcliffe became the ageless answer to the trivia question of what Rebels coach finally beat the Tide for the 1st time since 1988.

3. 1988 — Ole Miss 22, Alabama 12

Speaking of 1988: On an early October day in Tuscaloosa, with the Tide ranked 12th and the Rebels unranked, Ole Miss pulled off one of the most unlikely upsets one could ever dream of, especially in this lopsided rivalry. For the 1st time in almost a century’s worth of losses to the Crimson Tide, the Rebels finally secured their first-ever road victory in the series.

Alabama finished 9-3 that year and Ole Miss went just 5-6, but the Rebels had enough grit to walk into Bryant-Denny and stun the home crowd. Bama’s fan base didn’t take too kindly to the rare loss to the Rebels, and because of that this game became known as “The Brick Bowl,” when 2nd-year Tide coach Bill Curry claimed that a brick was thrown through his office window after the loss.

Alabama won its 1st 3 games that season before running into Ole Miss on the wrong day, and after losing to the Rebels the Tide won their next 3 games. So Bama stood a solid 6-1 at the end of October with the 1 loss being to the program it almost never loses to. A big reason for the loss? The Crimson Tide managed 0 yards passing. Zero. It cost them bragging rights, a little embarrassment and, yes, a flying brick.

2. 1968 — Ole Miss 10, Alabama 8

The Rebels hadn’t beaten the Crimson Tide since 1910. So 58 years’ worth of frustration came to a crashing end for Ole Miss when it toppled Alabama on an early October day in Jackson, not Oxford. The Rebels were unranked while the Tide sat at No. 11, which heightend the thrill of this win for Ole Miss fans.

The underdog Rebels picked a perfect day to rise up and beat the Tide, because they were playing in front of the largest crowd to date to ever watch a college football game in Mississippi. Instead of Alabama ruling the day as it almost always did against Ole Miss, the Rebels created a lasting memory for everyone in that crowd of 47,152 who was rooting for Ole Miss — which was likely most everyone.

Alabama was seconds from being shut out, but it saved a little face by scoring with 8 seconds left. The shutout was ruined but the day wasn’t for the Rebels. Archie Manning didn’t have to put up big numbers, either. The QB’s 6-yard touchdown pass to Henry Shows in the 2nd quarter, plus a field goal in the 3rd quarter, turned out to be just enough.

1. 1976 — Ole Miss 10, Alabama 7

Nearly a decade later, in the same stadium in Jackson, by almost an identical score, the unranked Rebels toppled the 6th-ranked Tide in a September stunner. The records at the end of this season alone put this one at the top of our list of shockers.

Ole Miss would go just 5-6 in ’76, and just 3-4 in the SEC. Alabama, meanwhile, was a robust 9-3 overall and 5-2 in the conference. The Crimson Tide hardly ever lose to the Rebels, and they definitely weren’t supposed to lose to them this particular season. But they did, and the party in Jackson and across the state (maybe except for Starkville) probably lasted into early the following week.

The Rebels outlasted a Bryant-coached team that would go on to beat UCLA in the Liberty Bowl. The upset victory led to Ole Miss coach Ken Cooper being named the United Press International National Coach of the Week.

So, in a rivalry where Alabama seemingly always wins, Alabama doesn’t always win. On a handful of special days, the Rebels have ruled.

Ole Miss fans have a right to believe it can happen again on Saturday. They are dreaming of that elusive 11th win over the program that has knocked them around for most of the past 128 years.