2026 SEC Bucket List Road Trip: Heading to the Starkvegas
We continue our SEC bucket list road trip with a week five expedition.To kick off the month of October, we take a trip to Starkville.
Week 5: Alabama at Mississippi State
Get your noise cancelling headphones. Get some Tylenol. And, get your behind to Starkville for one of the oldest rivalries in the SEC. Alabama heads to Mississippi State in what is one of the weaker slates of the entire season.
The other options for this weekend are Auburn heading to Knoxville to take on Tennessee and Kentucky traveling to Williams-Brice Stadium to take on South Carolina in one of the juiciest potential upset games of the year.
There were other options, but none that will offer what you’ll see from these two schools that are just 82.4 miles apart. These two have played 108 times. That’s the eighth most of any series in the SEC. This year’s version should be good and should also be one of the biggest trap games of the year. Alabama hosts Georgia the following week, and weird things happen in Starkville. Just look at last year’s game against Texas.
Kalen DeBoer has done really well in his career against ranked opponents. Where he’s struggled is against teams he’s supposed to beat. With Georgia waiting in the shadows a week later, Kamario Taylor and Jeff Lebby’s offense will pose an absolute nightmare scenario for a lot of defenses in the SEC this year.
That should especially be the case against an Alabama defense that is thinner than deli meat on the defensive line. They’ll be starting six new starters in the front seven and have historically struggled with dual threat quarterbacks.
Mississippi State is projected to win 5.5 games this season according to sportsbooks. The roster might not be good enough to win eight or nine games, but Kamario Taylor is good enough to put them on his back and win a game they aren’t supposed to.
