Difficult to see Florida being competitive with Alabama in SEC title game
This isn’t going to be easy for me. Part of my job is to sell you on the SEC Championship Game next Saturday in Atlanta.
No. 1 Alabama, champion of the West, will face No. 15 Florida, winner of the East. It’s a college football game, so by definition that means anything can happen. But I’m having a hard time seeing how this one will be remotely competitive.
Their respective performances on Rivalry Weekend hammered home the fact that the divide between the two divisions is as wide as ever. The Crimson Tide are coming off a 30-12 win over Auburn. The game didn’t even feel that close. The Gators are moving on after a 31-13 loss to Florida State. Again, the game didn’t even feel that close.
Perhaps never before has the outcome of the best conference in American’s title game appeared so certain prior to toe meeting leather.
‘Bama has opened as a 21.5-point favorite over UF. Three of the other four Power 5 leagues will also play championship games Dec. 3. The betting line for the favorites in the other trio of matchups is 16 points … combined.
While the transitive property doesn’t necessarily apply to sports, the Tide just held an Auburn team with a superior offense to Florida to 12 points and 182 yards. Florida was just held to 13 points — 7 of them came off a fumbled punt return, too — and 205 yards by a Florida State team with an inferior defense to Alabama.
By that logic, the Gators might not dent the Georgia Dome scoreboard at all. The Crimson Tide only give up a nation-leading 11.2 points per game.
Credit: Marvin Gentry-USA TODAY Sports
This will be the 25th SEC Championship Game in history, with the first one occurring between these two very same programs in 1992. ‘Bama beat UF 28-21 at Legion Field in Birmingham on its way to the national title.
Florida and the Tide are separated by 14 spots in the most recent — it just came out Sunday — AP Poll. Six times before in the conference title game there has been at least this much distance between the two participants, including last year when Alabama was No. 1 and the Gators were No. 18. The favorites have gone 5-1 in those matchups.
All five of those victories were by double digits. Aggregate score? 173-52. That math works out to an average final tally of 35-10.
The outlier was 2001, when No. 21 LSU upset No. 2 Tennessee 31-20 in the ATL. As coincidence would have it, the Tigers were coached that season by the one and only Nick Saban (above). However, his days of being the underdog are long gone.
As stated previously, this will be a rematch of last year’s league championship game. The Crimson Tide won 29-15 — stop me if you’ve heard this before: It really wasn’t that close — on their way to Saban’s fourth national championship in seven seasons. UF only managed to score on a punt return and a garbage-time TD pass.
‘Bama is better in 2016. Florida, conversely, is worse. A Gators triumph would surely be the biggest shocker in the quarter century of this affair.
While UF has been carried by its defense for a second consecutive year, injuries have mounted up on that side of the ball recently. As a matter of fact, Florida coach Jim McElwain (below) did his conference call Sunday from the training room.
From the defensive line to the linebacking corps to the secondary, the Gators will be anything but full strength facing the Tide. Alabama, on the other hand, has been relatively healthy this season — safety Eddie Jackson’s broken leg a few weeks ago hurt, of course — and feature more depth than any program in the country.
Even if UF’s chances to win lie somewhere between slim and none, just getting there two years in a row is an accomplishment unto itself.
Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports
“For me personally, it’s to see the work and the commitment that our organization and our players have put in to get to such a great game,” McElwain said. “It’s hard to explain, but this game is something special. Year in and year out, a great conference with great teams. There are no gimmes in this league, and you’ve got to truly earn getting there. That’s what makes it so satisfying.
“Getting back again … we’ve got some guys that have gotten their feet wet there, and now it’s time to go jump into the deep end of the pool. I know our guys are looking forward to it.”
Witnessing the kind of play that the Crimson Tide routinely put on tape can be jarring for any opposing coach. From offense to defense to special teams, this iteration of the ‘Bama machine doesn’t appear to have any flaws.
“Already, from just kind of getting off the bus and getting up here to work, there’s only been a couple of times so far that I’ve become violently ill watching them,” McElwain joked. “But at the same time, it is about us, and they’re going to say the same thing. It doesn’t matter about the opponent. What it matters about is us doing our job at a high level against the best in one of the biggest stages that there ever is.
“To go through life and be able to do that, that’s pretty cool. I know we’re excited about it.”
If Florida does have one distinct advantage over the Tide, it’s in the pressure department. You’d have to quite literally bleed orange and blue to believe that the Gators have anything more than a puncher’s chance. Rushing offense, rushing defense, passing offense, passing defense — Alabama is on another level across the board.
UF has already been blown out of this contest in Las Vegas and on every simulator. All that’s left is to play it for real.
John Crist is the senior writer for Saturday Down South, a member of the FWAA and a voter for the Heisman Trophy. Send him an e-mail, like him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter.
