Could an addled nation see both its top two college football teams disintegrate in one Saturday afternoon? No, it could not, because the upper of those teams was Alabama, and the Alabama of the 2010s long since has the knowhow to elude a thicket. When it finished eluding before 66,176 at humid Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, the Crimson Tide had seen a 21-point deficit, then an 18-point lead, then a 48-43 win over No. 19 Ole Miss and an ending that almost went haywire.

“An unbelievable game for fans to watch, and a really difficult game for an old coach to try to suffer through,” Alabama Coach Nick Saban said, but of course, the 64-year-old coach also said, “We’ve got coaches getting IV. We’ve got players getting IV. But the old fellow doesn’t need an IV. ’Cause they don’t make ’em like they used to.”

If Alabama foundered at the beginning and shuddered at the end, it certainly aced the middle, scoring six touchdowns from all three phases, and for that, Saban even credited “the players knowing what happened in the Florida State game.”

In the game sort of featuring No. 2 Florida State, of course, Louisville got ahead and then got away for a 63-20 annihilation, and it looked like Alabama might follow it off the cliff about three minutes to halftime.

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During a frenetic sequence that lasted less than four minutes but bulged with four touchdowns, the first two went to Ole Miss. First, polished senior quarterback Chad Kelly found NFL-bound tight end Evan Engram so alone up the right hash that he looked to be running across a prairie. That made for a 63-yard touchdown and a 17-3 lead.

Then, Jalen Hurts, the Alabama quarterback who spent this September weekend last year leading Channelview (Tex.) High to an 82-14 win over Aldine (Houston) High, backed up to throw and to feel some college football. Around the bend where the right tackle ought to be came defensive tackle Breeland Speaks, and his head-on meeting with Hurts left the football alone on the turf.

When end John Youngblood found it there and ran it 44 yards for a touchdown, it had so many meanings. Ole Miss led 24-3 just 2:47 before halftime. Ole Miss’s first two-game win streak against Alabama looked primed to become a three-game win streak. Alabama had its first deficit that large since the Sugar Bowl of January 2009, when Utah helped itself to a rude, hasty 21-0 lead toward a 31-17 win.

“Everybody started getting everybody going and just telling everybody to keep pushing,” Alabama wide receiver Calvin Ridley said.

“It was the same mood, the same mentality,” Alabama linebacker Ryan Anderson said.

“They competed from the heart,” Saban said, and soon said also, “They were great at halftime.”

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They were great at halftime partly because they had been great in those last 167 seconds of the half. First, in probably the most meaningful turn of the game — even as Saban cautioned against calling any turn meaningful in such a “wild and woolly game” — Alabama breezed 50 yards in three quick plays, scoring from six yards when Ridley came across to “intercept” the snap and head to the end zone.

Then it forced a punt and, boom, senior safety Eddie Jackson, a recent choice as a return man, weaved his way up the right side of the field to open terrain on an 85-yard punt return for a touchdown. By early in the third quarter, when Kelly went back to throw near his goal line, and Anderson came around the bend to greet Kelly similarly to how Speaks had greeted Hurts, the football again lay on the turf.

The 319-pound Da’Ron Payne found it there, helped himself to a three-yard return touchdown and helped the scoreboard back to the tie — this time 24-24 — with which it began. “We needed about every guy we had out there,” Saban said.

Hurts, having weathered the college game’s dings and indignities, continued to manage the game in a way Saban would compliment later on, and soon, with the score 27-27, he managed maybe the telltale play — by faking and handing off. He took a shotgun snap, faked to Ridley coming across and handed to sophomore back Damien Harris, part of Alabama’s fledgling new running game post-Derrick Henry, the 2015 Heisman Trophy winner. By the time Harris stopped stomping 67 yards up the middle of the field, Alabama set up camp at the Ole Miss 1-yard line, where Bo Scarbrough could spill over.

More mania littered the path from there — 34-27 — to 48-30, including Alabama turning to five runs for a 59-yard drive with Hurts rolling for 41 on the first play, and an entertaining romp from 294-pound defensive end Jonathan Allen (Stone Bridge High). Allen took the football after linebacker Tim Williams helped make it squirt from Kelly’s hand, and Allen had his own 75-yard interception return.

Amid even all that, Ole Miss had an apparent 33-yard touchdown pass from Kelly to Damore’ea Stringfellow called back to the 1-yard line under review — his knee was down — and then got relegated to a field goal. It had an apparently meaningless late touchdown for 48-37, then a somewhat less meaningless onside kick, then a not-meaningless 37-yard touchdown pass from Kelly to A.J. Brown with 2:51 still left.

From there, Harris had to make a clinching one-yard run on third and one that Saban called “nothing but the nasty,” and Hurts would walk off the field to a roaring corner of Alabama fans with his considerable hair and his movie-star face and a slow, confident nod. This September he is playing college football, wild and woolly college football.