You can talk all you want about the greatness of Alabama and the clean record of LSU, but try as you might, you simply cannot take Ole Miss out of the equation in the SEC West race.

And I know you’ve been trying.

Rightly so, really. The Rebels, once No. 3 in the country after beating Alabama, looked awful in losses to Florida and Memphis. They are a hard team to figure out and many folks – even the most loyal of Rebel rooters – have been ready to write them off.

Then they crush Texas A&M 23-3 like they did Saturday night – and look darn good doing it – and we know Ole Miss (6-2, 3-1 in the SEC) is still for real. They will not be going away.

Thanks to that win over Alabama, the Rebels still control their own destiny in the SEC West. They are in the driver’s seat, despite their inconsistent play. Some days they drive through traffic like a NASCAR veteran and other days they’re driving like a 12-year-old who borrows his mother’s car. There’s good and there’s bad, and we never really know what to expect from them.

But Saturday night they were very good.

QB Chad Kelly was excellent Saturday. He’s sure a fast starter. In his last three games, Kelly has started 11-of-11, 7-of-7 and 12-of-12 passing. That’s only perfect. He threw for 241 yards and two scores, though he did have three interceptions. Ole Miss, which hasn’t run the ball very well this season, pounded away Saturday for 230 yards, their highest total this year in conference games. The Ole Miss offense looks a lot different when they can run it.

Need proof? In the two losses to Florida and Memphis, they only averaged 95.5 yards per game.

The Rebels defense was spectacular. They gave A&M nothing. In one stretch from the middle of the second quarter until he was pulled late in the fourth, Texas A&M QB Kyle Allen went 22 consecutive throws without getting positive yardage. He was 2-for-22 in that stretch, and the completions lost 1 yard and 2 yards.  The Aggies passed for only 134 yards, ran for only 58 and scored the second-fewest points in the past decade. (They were shut out by Alabama last year.)

That’s dominance, and that’s even without Robert Nkemdiche. The Rebels star has followed concussion protocol all week and seemed to be tracking well to be able to play. But he woke up with a headache Saturday morning, coach Hugh Freeze said, so he sat out. His guys did just fine without him. A&M ran only 14 plays in Mississippi territory all night.

Dates with Auburn and Arkansas are must-wins for Ole Miss, and they should be favored by a good bit in both games. The Nov. 21 showdown with LSU would then be for all the marbles, though Mississippi State certainly will have something to say in the Egg Bowl.

There are a few good reasons to root for Ole Miss to run the table. First off, they’ve never been to Atlanta for the title game. It would be good to check that off their bucket list.

But my favorite reason? Oh, that’s easy.

I want to see the College Football Playoff committee sweat.

Say Ole Miss runs the table and wins the SEC. They would be 11-2, which might not look too pretty to the committee. But they also would have a trump card … an SEC championship.

To me, that trumps all.

In my opinion, you can’t have a four-team college playoff that doesn’t include the best team from the best league. And this is no built-in SEC bias from me, because I’m Big Ten born and ACC raised. Running the gauntlet of an SEC schedule and winning the conference championship game deserves to be rewarded with a spot in the playoffs. That should matter.

Another month of wins by Ole Miss and the debating can begin. That’s fine with me.