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UGA/Bama and the history of conference battles for national titles
By Joe Cox
Published:
With the College Football Playoff’s championship’s all-SEC roster set, we scrambled for the history books. How normal is it for one conference rival to play another for a national title? How about an SEC vs. SEC matchup? Here’s what we learned.
Football
Since the BCS standardized college football’s championship picture after the 1998 season, only once has a conference battle settle the national title. Of course, that was:
Alabama vs. LSU, 2011: It took a perfect storm for this game to happen, but the BCS championship game rematched No. 1 LSU with No. 2 Alabama. In the regular season, undefeated LSU handled the Crimson Tide 9-6 in a battle of field goals. But in the BCS finale, the Tide turned the table, winning 21-0 and elevating themselves above LSU in the college football pecking order.
In the CFP era, the current bowl season marks the first time two teams from the same conference have earned CFP selections. And, of course, Georgia and Alabama play next Monday for all the marbles.
Men’s basketball
Twice since the expansion of the NCAA Tournament field to 64 teams in 1985 have two teams from the same conference met in the NCAA Championship. They are:
Villanova vs. Georgetown, 1985: The Big East might be gone now, but these two league members fought it out for all the glory in ’85. Villanova had to shoot 78 percent to win, but the Wildcats did, 66-64.
Kansas vs. Oklahoma, 1988: Both schools were part of the Big 8, which ended up becoming the Big 12. They’re still rivals, but in 1988, they met for all the marbles, with KU’s Danny Manning leading the 83-79 upset.
The SEC has never had two teams meet for the hoops title, but there have been some close calls. Kentucky and Mississippi State both made the Final Four in 1996. UK won the title, but State lost to Syracuse in its semifinal. Similarly, in 2006, Florida won it all and nearly faced LSU in the championship game, but UCLA knocked off the Tigers in the semifinals. Then in 2014, Florida and Kentucky could have met for the championship. But the Gators were upset by UConn, which then turned the same trick on the Wildcats.
Women’s basketball
Since the women’s NCAA Tournament started in 1982, the SEC has had two teams battled for supremacy no less than three times. Those were:
Tennessee vs. Auburn, 1989: This was UT’s sixth Final Four in the first eight years of the Tournament. Auburn, on the other hand, was in the middle of three straight seasons of losing in the championship game — this time to UT, 76-70.
Tennessee vs. Georgia, 1996: Georgia was a No. 2 seed, but upset Louisiana Tech in the Elite 8 before advancing all the way to the final. The Bulldogs met a UT squad that had survived UConn 88-83 in a semifinal. UT took the championship, 83-65.
South Carolina vs. Mississippi State, 2017: The gritty Bulldogs captured America’s attention by knocking off the nearly unbeatable top-seeded UConn Huskies in a grueling semifinal. However, South Carolina nabbed the title with a 67-55 triumph over State.
Only three times have other conferences pulled off the national title matchup: The ACC in 2006 (Maryland-Duke) and the now defunct Big East in 2009 and 2013 (UConn vs. Louisville in both matchups).
Baseball
Warm-weather programs dominate college baseball — at times, schools with even warmer weather than the SEC. Southern California, Arizona State, Miami and Stanford were early repeat winners of the College World Series. But the SEC has made inroads in the past few decades. For instance:
LSU vs. Alabama, 1997: Skip Bertman’s LSU Tigers were the second seed in the tournament, but they beat top seeded Alabama 13-6 in the final. The championship was Bertman’s fourth at LSU, where he became the second SEC coach to win the Series, a year after Georgia’s 1990 victory.
South Carolina vs. Florida, 2011: Carolina and Roy Tanner had won the Series the year before, and they sweetened the deal by winning back-to-back titles with a pair of wins over Kevin O’Sullivan’s Gators, 2-1 and 5-2.
Florida vs. LSU, 2017: But don’t weep for O’Sullivan, as Florida beat conference rival LSU 4-3 and 6-1 to nab the 2017 Series. The Gators became the fifth SEC team to win the trophy, joining LSU (six titles), South Carolina (two), Georgia (1990) and Vanderbilt (2014).
Other sports
Don’t think that the SEC only plays hard when the TV lights are on. Witness other events like men’s indoor track and field (Texas A&M won the national title over Florida in 2017, which would be more notable except that it’s the eighth time two SEC schools have met for that title since 2000), softball (Florida won the title over Alabama in 2014), and women’s swimming and diving (Auburn beat Georgia for the title in 2006, but UGA has won three of the past five NCAA titles).
While an all-SEC road to a championship has never happened in quite as bright of a spotlight as the upcoming CFP finale, it has been happening for decades. Maybe it really does mean more?
Joe Cox is a columnist for Saturday Down South. He has also written or assisted in writing five books, and his most recent, Almost Perfect (a study of baseball pitchers’ near-miss attempts at perfect games), is available on Amazon or at many local bookstores.
