This is an opinion column.

This Iron Bowl week feels different because it is.

Not diminished, just different.

For what feels like a generation, there were extra stakes practically every Thanksgiving week around here. Whether it was an SEC West title decider or a knockout round for one side’s shot at playing in Atlanta or beyond, the Iron Bowl almost always had a multiplier.

Some extra juice.

Perhaps you could squeeze some hope out of Alabama’s now diminished shot at making the first 12-team College Football Playoff, but it’s quite a longshot.

Oklahoma spoiled that last week. That result was more stunning for the 24-3 final score than the outcome itself, but it set the scene for something old that’s now something new.

An Egg Bowl of an Iron Bowl.

You know what I mean, and no disrespect to our neighbors to the west, but they do too.

Rarely does a Thanksgiving or holiday adjacent meeting between Mississippi and Mississippi State have any real conference or national impact. The Bulldogs have only made one appearance in the SEC Championship and that came in 1998. Their rivals have never been and that streak continues into this new era.

That only adds importance to the Egg Bowl for all the old-fashioned reasons.

One could argue the hatred on the field and in the stands every year in Starkville or Oxford surpasses anything we see in Tuscaloosa or Auburn.

They aren’t playing with an eye on next week.

There’s a singular focus on savaging their neighbors with no regard for anything else.

That’ll essentially the case this Saturday in Bryant-Denny Stadium as the focus narrows from the national level to a more local one. Not that some of those high-stakes games didn’t deliver. Just look back to last year or 2013. Those are Iron Bowls that’ll live on forever, but partially because it impacted national title runs that either began, ended or were extended.

This week already brought some of that old-school rivalry talk.

Down in Auburn, freshman linebacker Demarcus Riddick was throwing shade at Jalen Milroe, Ryan Williams and the Crimson Tide in general.

“I will not lose to Bama while I’m here,” Riddick said after saying he was faster than Alabama’s quarterback and the Tide’s star freshman receiver was nothing special to him.

In response, Milroe said he’d never heard of Riddick.

“Let him talk,” he told reporters in Tuscaloosa on Tuesday. “It’s a part of it.”

Indeed.

“Teams have talked before,” Alabama defensive lineman Tim Keenan said. “They’ve had this and that to say. Auburn’s a good team and we’re just preparing for them the best way we can.”

There’s some spice added because of the recruiting landscape. Hugh Freeze clearly made in-state prospects a priority by taking one look at the Tigers’ board for the 2025 class. Infusing home-grown talent who grew up in this madness as opposed to shopping on the national level will only add to the on-field scrap.

Freeze brings an aggressive tone at the top of the Auburn pyramid, perhaps more of the sharp-edged approach when compared to Alabama’s first-year coach in Kalen DeBoer.

Iron Bowl No. 1 for Freeze was gut-wrenching as his team limped into Jordan-Hare Stadium and came one heroic moment from pulling the ultimate upset. This year, the momentum has shifted in the most abrupt way possible.

Where Alabama was the top-ranked team early last month as Auburn was in a tailspin, the winds shifted Saturday. Alabama’s sorry performance at Oklahoma, paired with the Tigers’ field-storming takedown of Texas A&M, has confidence riding opposite directions.

Now, all roads intersect at 2:30 p.m. CT Saturday in Bryant-Denny Stadium.

Alabama’s still hanging onto some hope of a playoff miracle while Auburn’s scrapping for bowl eligibility.

But the game that already means everything feels a little more important this time.

And for different reasons.

The purest kind.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.