ESPN's Top 100 landed this morning, and the headline is that one backfield owns the top of two positions: Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss is ranked the best quarterback in college football and running back Kewan Lacy the best running back, both inside the overall Top 10.

Read that again, because the delivery matters more than the ranking. Not the best quarterback in the SEC. The best in the sport. And the guy handing off to, or getting handed off by, is the best at his own position. Two players, one huddle, No. 1 and No. 1.

What makes it land is where Chambliss came from. He is a Division II quarterback by resume, a Ferris State product, a guy who was not on anyone's Heisman shortlist eighteen months ago and was not supposed to be the answer in Oxford at all. He got the job the way backups always get the job, and then the offense did not sputter, it took off. That is the part of this that I find genuinely great. College football still coughs up a story like that every few years, and every time it happens it should remind the sport's gatekeepers how thin the line is between "small school kid" and "best player at the position."

Lacy's road was shorter but not softer. He came over from Missouri and turned into the load carrier, the between-the-tackles hammer that makes an Ole Miss offense look mean instead of just fast. A quarterback who can move plus a back who does not need help getting to the second level is the oldest recipe in the book. It still works.

checked the almanac: ole miss has not won an sec title since 1963, back when johnny vaught was running the place. that is a long time to wait on a backfield like this one.

What comes next is the hard part. Preseason lists are affidavits of what a player already did, and Ole Miss is doing this in a new-look building, with a new voice at the top after the coach who assembled the roster left for LSU. Rankings do not survive first contact with an SEC schedule. Chambliss and Lacy have to do it again, in front of a defense that has watched all the tape.

I will be watching the first real down of pressure. That is where the D-II question finally goes away for good, or does not.