Kirby Smart, Nick Saban reveal the biggest challenge when facing Lane Kiffin

The game of the week in college football is No. 9-ranked Georgia hosting No. 5 Ole Miss, which brought ESPN's College GameDay crew to Athens, Georgia, on Saturday morning.

That set up a fun segment where Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart joined the set and sat next to his former boss, Nick Saban.

Saban asked Smart about their familiarity with Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin, who was Alabama's offensive coordinator from 2014-16, overlapping on Saban's staff with Smart, who was still the defensive coordinator through the 2015 season.

"Let me ask you something, Kirby, because we have lots of experience with Lane," Saban said. "How important is it in this game for your defense to disguise what you're doing pre-snap because we've all seen the infamous 'Lane whistle', which means he sees what you're in and he's going to probably play and take advantage big-time of what you're in."

Smart was already nodding along in agreement before Saban finished the question.

"It really is amazing. If you really want to enjoy a football game, just watch Lane on the sideline," Smart said. "He watches the team's secondary, waits for a signal and as soon as they hit a signal that he knows the whistle hits, and they're checking to the right play. The job today of these people (the fans) is to be so loud he can't talk to his quarterback. They've got to help us -- I don't know if it'll work.

"He does a good job. At the end of the day, they're going to know what you're in most of the time. You've got to play what you're in better than they make their check. There are no perfect calls. If you're in man, you gotta play man. That's what it is. If you're in quarters, you gotta play quarters. If you're in Cover-2, you gotta play Cover-2. But they're in the right play a lot, and he does a fabulous job of that."

Kiffin later joined the show remotely from Ole Miss' morning walkthrough, and Saban asked him, "So, Lane, do you have the whistle ready today? I mean, are we going to be able to take advantage of something we see early on? How are you going to handle their third-down package?"

"Yeah, yeah, the whistle is ready," Kiffin said. "We use that; we get the quarterback's attention a lot. They always say, 'Is the whistle loud enough?' And I always say, 'Well, I was next to Kirby Smart and Coach Saban in Baton Rouge in Tiger Stadium in overtime, and we whistled all the way down to Blake Sims, whistled to him, Blake turned around, and we changed the play to a pick play, and we beat LSU. Kirby actually tackled me when we beat LSU."

Georgia (5-1, 3-1 SEC) is a 7.5-point favorite in this SEC showdown, which kicks off at 3:30 p.m. ET on ABC, but Ole Miss (6-0, 3-0) is the higher-ranked team and one of 11 FBS teams still unbeaten.

The Rebels already have one top-10 win over LSU (at home) and will look for another Saturday. Kiffin and Ole Miss did beat Georgia last year in Oxford, Mississippi, 28-10, but the Bulldogs have won the last six meetings between the teams in Athens and 11 of the last 13 overall. Ole Miss is 4-19-1 all-time vs. Georgia in Athens.

The Bulldogs' lone loss so far came at home to Alabama, but they also needed overtime to escape Tennessee and were down 10-0 last week at Auburn (and a whisker away from 17-0 before a controversial Tigers goal-line fumble) before rallying in the second half.

Smart was asked how he has addressed his team's slow starts with the players.

"It's one of those things you really don't want to talk about because if you talk about it too much, it doesn't happen," he said. "It's like turnovers -- we've had a couple the last couple of weeks. We want to start fast, I can promise you that. We're going to do all we can to make that happen."

Smart was also asked about the challenge of making defensive substitutions on third down against Kiffin and Ole Miss offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr.

"Yeah, I don't know that they care. We're so bad on third down they want us to get our guys on the field," Smart joked. "... It's a game within the game. Everybody does the same thing."