Regular meetings between Alabama and Clemson have defined the last four seasons of college football. Even when it was Alabama and Georgia in last year’s championship game, the Crimson Tide and Tigers still clashed in a semifinal Playoff game. Monday night, the College Football Playoff’s national champion will be decided between Alabama and Clemson for the third time in four seasons.

With Alabama-Clemson games becoming regular with so much on the line, it’s starting to have a rivalry feel even though they aren’t on each other’s regular-season schedule. That’s how Alabama RB Damien Harris sees it.

“It’s another rivalry game,” Harris told ESPN reporter Holly Rowe Saturday in San Jose. “All the things that we’ve gone through, from watching Derrick Henry, having played against them in 2015, like you said, two years ago, we played them in the national championship and Bo (Scarbrough) went down, I felt like I was forgotten about. I had a thousand-yard season that year. Definitely, when we played them next year, I had a little extra motivation, a little presence about myself, a chip on my shoulder, if you will, to prove that I’m still the guy I was before the Clemson game. I had a great end of the season that year back in 2016 – not to take anything away from him. Whenever he got hurt, it was like, ‘What are we going to do in the run game?’ I felt like I was jumping in the back of a crowd trying to raise my hand like ‘I’m still back here.’ So, like I said, I carry that chip on my shoulder.

“This year, it’s a little bit different. I’ve played well against them. Whatever this team needs me to do, I’m going to do regardless of whether it’s run the ball 15 times or five. We know we’ve got a lot of power on offense and a lot of guys that can make explosive plays. It’s kind of hard to spread one football around. For this game, I don’t even care. I just want to go out and win this game.”