The expectation of Ole Miss being part of the expanded College Football Playoffs continues

Lane Kiffin is entering his fifth season as the head coach of the Ole Miss football team and year five could be the one that he has been working towards these previous four seasons in Oxford.

During his introductory press conference in December 2019, Kiffin said he was not coming to Ole Miss to be “good, but to be great.” The roadwork has been done and the path is leading to the 2024 College Football Playoffs being Kiffin’s signature moment.

Expanding form four teams to 12 this winter gives eight more teams the hope of getting their shot to play for a national championship. Coming off the first 11-win season in program history, success in the transfer portal — a No. 1 transfer class — and roster retention in key positions has Ole Miss as a CFP darling this offseason.

Nearly a month into this offseason and the ESPN college football reporters have offered up their best collective guesses as to which teams are going to make up the new CFP field. The Rebels are firmly entrenched and a consensus to be one of the 12 teams, according to ESPN.

Not only is Ole Miss viewed as a lock for the CFP, if one goes by these way-too-early projections, but it is also strongly considered a favorite to host a first round game and a bubble team to potentially crack the Top 4 and earn a bye.

These prognostications by ESPN writers were released on Friday have the Rebels punching their ticket to the program’s first CFP appearance and an average seeding of 7.3 by the group of six.

ESPN’s Chris Low offered up his reasoning as for why Ole Miss might break through as a CFP newcomer in 2024.

“Ole Miss and Lane Kiffin have knocked on the playoff door in two of the last three seasons,” Low wrote. “The Rebels are poised to knock that door down in 2024. They have an elite (and experienced) quarterback in Jaxson Dart. Tre Harris returns as one of the more dynamic receivers in college football, and Ole Miss beefed up its offense line and front seven on defense.

“Kiffin has pumped life into an Ole Miss program that has improved in all facets, and as schedules go in 2024, the Rebels appear to have one of the more manageable ones in the SEC.”

The projected seeds for Ole Miss went as high as the 6-Seed, twice, and as low as the 9-Seed with a pair of 8-Seeds and a 7-Seed mixed in.

Earning one of the Top 4 seeds and a consensus pick to win the Southeastern Conference is Georgia, according to the ESPN projections. Texas, Alabama and Ole Miss are viewed as the next best SEC teams going by the projected seeds.

Ole Miss would have qualified for the CFP twice in Kiffin’s first four seasons, if the new format had been in place prior to this fall.

Last season’s trip to the Peach Bowl where the Rebels were ranked No. 11 would have qualified them into the 12-team format and the 2021 season ending with a trip to the Sugar Bowl would have also been good enough to get into the new CFP era.

Still, the playoffs were a four-team affair and Ole Miss settled for two New Year’s Six bowl bids instead. Worthy consolation prizes but now those games are considered second round (or quarterfinals) CFP games in 2024.

Seeds 5-8 will host first round games at their home stadiums on December 20 and 21, meaning Oxford could benefit form an extra and eighth home game this fall if Ole Miss finishes inside the Top 8 in the final CFP Top 25 of the regular season.

From there the New Year’s Six bowls become host sites for the quarterfinals and semifinals. The Fiesta, Peach, Rose and Sugar Bowls are second round locations this season (December 31 and January 1) followed by the Orange and Cotton Bowls serving as semifinal sites in 2024 (January 9 and 10).

The Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta will host this season’s CFP National Championship game on January 20.