When you think of SEC football in the modern era, it isn’t long until you think of Alabama and Florida.

Since the initial expansion of the SEC and the founding of the SEC Championship Game in 1992, no programs have appeared in more title games (13 each). No teams have faced off for more SEC championships either, with the Tide and Gators meeting 10 times for the title. How dominant have Alabama and Florida been? You have to count the sum of the next 4 most common matchups just to reach the 10 Alabama-Florida games that have been played for the SEC title.

Supremacy in the series has been cyclical, with the Gators owning the bulk of the 90s and 2000s but Alabama a cut above Florida (and basically everyone else in the sport) over the past decade-plus. In fact, Alabama will enter Saturday’s game in The Swamp having won 7 in a row over the Gators dating to a dominant win over No. 1 Florida and Tim Tebow in the 2009 SEC Championship Game. The Tide will arrive in Gainesville for Saturday’s game as heavy favorites again, becoming just the 4th road team in the past 30 years to enter The Swamp as a double-digit favorite (the other 3 are 2-1 in those games).

Can Florida spring the upset? Or will Alabama win its 8th straight game over Florida and make a huge statement about the 2021 version of the Crimson Tide in the process?

If the game is anything like the one played in Atlanta last December, fans are in for a treat. In fact, the Tide and Gators have played some epic games in that span, including last season’s thrilling SEC Championship, won 52-46 by Alabama.

Here are SDS’s top 5 all-time Alabama-Florida games ahead of Saturday’s soiree in The Swamp.

1987: “The Emmitt Game” — Florida 23, No. 11 Alabama 14

It was the first career start for Emmitt Smith, and in hindsight, the first indicator of the remarkable things ahead of the young man from Pensacola who elected to stay in-state and play for the Gators instead of attending Alabama after a heated recruiting battle.

Smith ran for 224 yards and 2 touchdowns in leading the Gators to an upset win in Birmingham against a Crimson Tide defense that had led the nation in rushing defense and led Alabama to 10 wins a season prior. As would become his trademark throughout his professional career, Smith gained over 100 of his yards after initial contact, showing an uncanny ability to break tackles and avoid hard hits. Highlights are worth the watch, and found at the Florida Vault, here.

Smith’s rushing total broke Florida’s single-game rushing record, set in 1930, and set him off on a career that would end in Canton, Ohio in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In Gainesville, the game is now known as “The Emmitt Game” and the man Gators fans now simply call “Emmitt” remains the NFL’s all-time leading rusher. Smith’s name now sits high atop The Swamp in Florida’s most select football fraternity, the Ring of Honor.

1992: The Game that changed College Football — No. 2 Alabama 28, No. 12 Florida 21 (SEC Championship)

The SEC Championship is ingrained in southern football culture now, as natural a celebration and marker for the ending to college football’s regular season as Black Friday is a marker of the end of Thanksgiving and capitalism’s unique celebration of the beginning of the holiday season.

It wasn’t always this way. When the SEC expanded to 12 teams in 1992, adding South Carolina and Arkansas to the league, Roy Kramer’s idea to divide the league into divisions and hold a league championship game between division winners at the end of the season was met with doubters, if not derision. Wouldn’t requiring the best team in the league’s 11-game regular season to play one more football game actually hurt the league’s national title aspirations? Why take a risk that no other league did?

Kramer was willing to bet on the SEC anyway, and Florida met unbeaten Alabama in the 1992 SEC Championship Game. The Gators had captured their first (official and not stripped by the SEC or NCAA) SEC championship a season prior, and were at the beginning of their journey from parochial afterthought to national power under Steve Spurrier.

Meanwhile, Gene Stallings was leading an Alabama renaissance. Still, the game was a huge risk.

Alabama entered unbeaten, and in every other season of SEC football before 1992, would have gone directly to the Sugar Bowl to play Miami for the national title. Play even a close game there, and it’s likely a newspaper somewhere would declare Alabama national champions, which has always been enough to claim a title in Tuscaloosa.

Instead, the Tide had to upend the upstart Gators. For a long time, it looked like Florida would pull the upset. Then, in a play by Alabama defensive back Antonio Langham that is the focus of the wonderful SEC Storied film named “The Play that Changed College Football,” what looked like a game-winning drive for Florida turned into an Alabama celebration.

Alabama would rout heavily favored Miami a month later in the Sugar Bowl, leaving no doubt as to who was the national champion.

1999: The Tide end Florida’s 30-game Swamp winning streak — No. 21 Alabama 40, No. 3 Florida 39 (OT)

Under Spurrier, The Swamp became a house of horrors for road teams, with the Gators losing just 5 home games in Spurrier’s 12 years on the sidelines. The longest win streak for Florida came from 1994-1999, when Florida ran up 30 consecutive wins at home, with all but 2 by double-digits.

Tide fans weren’t quite sure what they had in quarterback Andrew Zow when he made the trip to Gainesville on a steamy early October day. He had been woeful in a home loss to Louisiana Tech just 2 weeks prior to the Florida game and tossed 3 interceptions against Arkansas a week later.

But Mike DuBose stuck with his quarterback, and Zow delivered the game of his life, throwing for 336 yards and 2 touchdowns. Alabama also got 3 touchdowns from Shaun Alexander, who was bottled up for most of three quarters but took the game over late. Florida forced overtime but missed an extra point after scoring on their first possession, opening the door for Alabama. Alexander scored, but Chris Kemp missed an extra point, sending the game to a second overtime — or so Florida fans thought. Instead, the Gators were called for lining up in the neutral zone on the attempt, and Kemp banged home the second one, lifting Alabama to a season-changing win and snapping Florida’s 30 game home winning streak.

The teams would meet for a rematch in Atlanta two months later, but this time, the Tide dominated, clobbering the Gators 34-7 to capture their first SEC title since 1992.

2008: “The Tebow game” — No. 2 Florida 31, No. 1 Alabama 20 (SEC Championship)

This was the 5th meeting between Alabama and Florida with both programs ranked in the top 10, but the first time they met ranked 1 and 2 in the AP Poll. It also marked the first SEC Championship Game between teams ranked 1 and 2 — and one of only 2 all-time to date.

The Tide were unbeaten with the nation’s top-ranked defense, ahead of schedule in laying the foundation for what would become the Nick Saban dynasty. The Gators were 11-1 and led by reigning Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow, but they were playing without their most explosive offensive weapon, All-American wide receiver Percy Harvin.

The Tide bottled up Tebow and the Gators for most of three quarters and behind a power run game and a dynamic Julio Jones, led by 3 entering the fourth quarter.

That’s when Tebow took over. He led Florida on back-to-back touchdown drives of 62 and 65 yards, going 5-for-5 on third down in the process, to lift Florida to a 31-20 victory.

Following the game, Saban had high praise for the Florida quarterback, endorsing him for a second consecutive Heisman Trophy (he would finish 2nd).

“He’s the greatest competitor I’ve ever seen at quarterback,” Saban said after the game. “I’m not sure there’s a better football player. He put the game on his shoulders. His teammates trust that he will make the play and he does. I’ve never seen anything like that fourth quarter. They scored two touchdowns where we had the play diagnosed about as well as we could. He either made the perfect read or the perfect throw.”

The win propelled Florida to its third national championship. Florida hasn’t won the SEC or national title since.

For Alabama, the loss motivated the team for the entire offseason. They would exact revenge on Tebow, and truly launch their dynasty, a year later in the same spot, defeating the Gators 32-13.

2020: The Greatest College Football Offense of all time — No. 1 Alabama 52, No. 11 Florida 46 (SEC Championship)

Alabama won the 2020 national championship behind one of the most prolific offenses in college football history. The Tide set an NCAA record for team success rate offensively (measured roughly as the percentage of plays resulting in a successful gain given down and distance), and ranked in the top 10 in the NCAA history books in yards per play (7.8!!) and pass efficiency offense.

Alabama’s three-headed offensive monster of DeVonta Smith, Mac Jones and Najee Harris were so prolific they finished 1-3-5 in the Heisman Trophy vote, making the 2020 Crimson Tide the first team in NCAA history to have three players finish in the top 5 of the vote.

Thanks in part to that trio, the Tide finished in the top 10 in NCAA history in margin of victory per game (nearly 30 points), defeating all but one opponent by double digits.

The one opponent? Florida, which featured a prolific offense of its own (1st in NCAA passing offense, 3rd in pass efficiency offense, 3rd in success rate) led by Heisman finalist Kyle Trask and perhaps the greatest tight end in college football history in Kyle Pitts. Florida’s sensational Kyles finished 4th and 10th in the Heisman vote, meaning the 2020 SEC Championship game featured 5 of the top 10 vote-getters for the Heisman Trophy.

The game was an “as advertised” shootout of epic proportions.

The Tide stormed to a 28-10 lead behind the tough running of Najee Harris (178 yards, 5 total touchdowns), the game MVP who collected 3 first-half touchdowns.

But Florida refused to go away, riding 408 yards passing from Trask and tremendous performances by Pitts (7 receptions, 129 yards, 1 touchdown) and Kadarius Toney (8 receptions, 153 yards, 1 touchdown) to cut Alabama’s lead to 52-46 late in the fourth quarter.

The Gators got the ball back with a chance to win, but Alabama’s Christian Harris put the game to bed with a sack of Trask as time expired on Florida’s comeback.

The Tide then clobbered Notre Dame and Ohio State in the College Football Playoff to capture the national title the following month.