This is it. We're entering the most critical stretch of the season for Ole Miss, and it starts this week as the Rebels travel to Death Valley, that "place where dreams go to die," as LSU coach Les Miles once famously said.
That's scary stuff because right now we're dreaming big.
Not this year.
Ole Miss is 7-0, and as Senquez Golson said shortly after the Rebels beat Tennessee...it don't mean nothing unless the Rebels keep winning.
That's what makes this season so different.
It's a feeling we've never felt before.
A team hoping to get bowl eligible can afford to drop a game. There's always the next one, and six or seven is all it takes.
A team trying to go undefeated? Well, that's a different story altogether. Please, spare me the "one game at a time" cliche'. That's a point for Hugh Freeze and his coaches to hammer home. We're fans, we're allowed, and if you're not looking at that schedule right now dreaming of 12-0 and a trip to Atlanta then you are a robot.
I can promise you that the players want to go undefeated.
For the first time in my lifetime it's late October and the dreams of Ole Miss fans reach far beyond the Music City Bowl.
Right now the dream is this:
Ole Miss, 11-0 in Oxford on November 29, hosting No. 1 Mississippi State with nothing less than an SEC West Championship and a ticket to the College Football Playoff on the line. And in that dream the Rebels win of course. We finish the season where we started it - in Atlanta, and then more wins, Jameis Winston getting attacked repeatedly by a ferocious group of hungry Landsharks followed by trophies and confetti. Lots and lots of red and blue confetti.
That's the dream.
And that's what's on the line when Ole Miss travels down to Baton Rouge for a Saturday night dance with LSU in Death Valley - the place where dreams go to die.
Only not this time Rebels. Don't let this one die. We're having way too much fun.