In college sports, repeating as national champs qualifies as a dynasty.

Given the roster attrition, players on a team who win consecutive national titles are given automatic “legend” status. They don’t pay for another meal/drink in that college town, they’re always on the sidelines for every football game they attend and when they go to a basketball game of their school, they’re sitting in the first few rows, where they’ll inevitably get a standing ovation the second they show up on the jumbotron.

All you have to do is repeat. Easy enough, right?

In the 21st century, we saw 2 SEC teams repeat as national champs in the 2 major revenue college sports — Florida basketball in 2006 and 2007, and Alabama football in 2011 and 2012. Both were celebrated in totally different ways. And because they were in different sports, they were never really compared side-by-side.

Today, that changes.

(Yes, South Carolina baseball fans. I hear you. The Gamecocks repeated as College World Series champs in 2010 and 2011. I wanted to just focus on the big revenue sports for this discussion. It was an incredible accomplishment, absolutely. Perhaps I’ll do a breakdown of just how great that was at some point during this period of #NoSports.)

Why was/is this a debate?

Well, because I made it one.

This is different because so far, I’ve only looked at widely-held debates that spanned a decade-plus. Tell me how many times an Arkansas fans explained why Darren McFadden should have won a Heisman Trophy. The same is true for Auburn fans explaining why the Tigers deserved a spot in the BCS National Championship in 2004.

I wanted to dig into this debate because if we stick to the confines of the argument, it’s interesting to judge the cross-sport comparison. We’re just talking about Florida basketball in 2006-07 and Alabama football in 2011-12. This is meant to dissect the process of running it back a year later and reaching the top of the mountain again.

Some would say a single-elimination tournament is a greater challenge, while others would argue the college football regular season is essentially a single-elimination tournament.

Historical context is a big part of this. For example, in the 30 years before Florida’s repeat, Duke (’91-92) was the only other team to accomplish that feat. In the 30 years before Alabama’s repeat, Nebraska (’94-95) and USC (’04-05) were the only teams to repeat.

Here’s the crazier stat. In the 30 years before Florida’s repeat, 20 schools won the NCAA Tournament. In the 30 years before Alabama’s repeat, 20 schools were recognized as national champions.

How many teams repeated as national champs since Florida and Alabama? Zero.

So yes, this is a debate because I said it is.

What people said at the time

There’s something I need to get out ahead of before we break down the impressiveness of each achievement.

When Florida repeated in 2007, part of the discussion that made the feat more impressive was the whole “becoming the first Division I school to win football AND basketball national titles in the same year” thing. Unreal accomplishment? Absolutely. Something I’ll factor into the debate? Absolutely not.

When Alabama repeated in 2012, part of the discussion that made the feat more impressive was the whole “winning 3 national titles in 4 years” thing. Unreal accomplishment? Absolutely. Something I’ll factor into the debate? Absolutely not.

Again, this is just about what happened during those 2 championship seasons.

Let’s start with what people said about Florida in 2007.

Go back and read what was written about the Gators after they took down Greg Oden, Mike Conley and Ohio State, and you’ll see a whole lot of the “best team ever” questions. New York Times writer Pete Thamel (now at Yahoo), had in the first paragraph of his post-title story “… a claim as arguably the best team since John Wooden’s dynasty days at UCLA.” Billy Donovan, Corey Brewer and Thad Matta were all quoted talking about the Gators as one of the best teams the sport had ever seen.

What made that Florida team unique was that the Gators were the first team to repeat with the same starting 5. Brewer, Al Horford, Joakim Noah, Lee Humprey and Taurean Green made up a starting 5 that was as unselfish and entertaining as one could be. When they won it all the first time, they waited a whole 5 days to announce at the championship pep rally that they were returning. The O’Connell Center went bananas:

Side note: Tim Tebow’s return makes me wonder — does Florida have the best “I’m coming back to school” announcements that we’ve ever seen in both basketball and football? There’s a case to be made for that.

Florida fans knew that Noah could have left and become the No. 1 overall pick after he took the sport by storm in March. Brewer and Horford could have been first-round picks, too. Considering that Brewer’s family needed the money to help with his dad’s medical issues, Gator fans knew how much was being sacrificed to take a shot at history.

In 2007, the Gators were no longer the 3-seed that caught fire late in the season. They were the obvious preseason No. 1 team that was scrutinized to no end. As expected, it was a bit of a grind. Sure, they had a 17-game winning streak (again) after losing 2 games in the first month of the season.

But go back and watch how much differently Noah was treated by the masses. Because of his quirky shooting motion, flowing hair and emotions-on-his-sleeve attitude, he was public enemy No. 1 in every building he walked into. He had that scuffle with the Kentucky cheerleader (she instigated that) and all of these hate groups about Noah in the early days of Facebook. Pat Forde, then at ESPN, wrote a great feature on Noah’s journey that year and how “the second time around was much harder.”

“You know what I realized?” Noah said (in 2007). “I don’t care what people think anymore. I used to. I’m not going to lie. I used to play for everybody. You can’t do that.”

Noah represented the year that was during Florida’s repeat season. It was rocky at times — they lost 3 of 4 games by double-digits to unranked SEC teams in late-February — but that team never splintered. Noah accepted the fact that even going into the Final Four after a much quieter tournament than the previous year, he was the team’s 4th-leading scorer.

Yet by the end of that second title game, it didn’t matter that Noah battled foul trouble dealing with Oden. Green and Humphrey couldn’t miss from deep, Horford took advantage of Oden’s foul trouble and the improved Brewer was the game’s most outstanding player after playing like a college Scottie Pippen.

There was no “Florida fatigue” after that second title. As for Alabama during its repeat, well, the fatigue was real.

In the championship stories, yes, there was talk about how historically dominant the defense was. But look after the 2011 season when Alabama took down LSU in what was billed as “Game of the Century, Part II,” and read what the Associated Press included in its postgame story following the 21-0 win:

“While the Crimson-clad fans will remember it as a thing of beauty, Alabama erased any doubts any doubts that it deserved to be in the title game over other one-loss team like Oklahoma State or Stanford.

Then again, one of those teams might have actually scored a touchdown before Alabama finally did, with 4:36 left in the game, long after fans may have flipped to something more entertaining than a one-sided kicking contest. Amazingly, these Southeastern Conference powerhouses played twice in a span of about two months, and never got one of those things worth 6 points — you know, touchdowns — until Trent Richardson broke off a 34-yard run with 4:36 remaining.

It only took 115 minutes, 34 seconds plus the overtime period of their first meeting.”

Remember, that was just after the first title. There was already this feeling that because of the way Alabama was winning — with a suffocating defense and an imposing ground game — that it was robbing us of entertainment. Like, “hey, we already saw 9-6 happen in the regular season. Let’s get somebody else in there who scores touchdowns, whether they deserve it or not.”

That’s an important distinction between the football-basketball titles. Because we had the BCS system to determine a national championship as opposed to a 64-team tournament, Alabama’s titles were deemed “anticlimactic.” Never mind the fact that LSU, which beat 8 ranked teams by an average of 3 touchdowns that year, was just shut out 21-0 in a national championship.

That narrative didn’t really change in 2012, either. Notre Dame was widely considered the better story, in part because of the whole “traditional power finally ready to win its first title in decades” thing, and in part because Manti Te’o was billed as this heroic figure because of the well-documented death of his girlfriend. Both turned out to be frauds.

What wasn’t a fraud? Alabama, which dominated its way to another “boring” national championship victory. It was such a snoozer that Brent Musburger’s legendary Katherine Webb call happened with Alabama leading 14-0 in the middle of the 1st quarter:

That and Barrett Jones pushing McCarron were the only real moments of interest in that game. Remember, that moment — McCarron losing his mind because Jones didn’t snap the ball — happened with Alabama up 42-14 in the 4th quarter. McCarron was essentially Nick Saban on the field. It was Saban who was visibly upset after having the Gatorade poured on him following Alabama’s first BCS crown back in 2009.

Alabama made it look, dare I say, too easy during its repeat? People forget that in both 2011 and 2012, the Crimson Tide actually came in as the No. 2 team in the BCS standings. By the end of both games, there appeared to be this public frustration that such a vanilla team — at least offensively — was heads and shoulders above the rest of the sport.

Fair or not, the perception of Alabama’s repeat compared to Florida’s couldn’t have been more different.

The worst take you can have about this debate

I’m sort of predicting comments here because as I said, this really isn’t some widely-held debate. Here’s one.

“Alabama shouldn’t have even played for that 2011 title because it already lost to LSU.”

Here’s the problem with that logic. While this did prompt the start of the Playoff system, Alabama earned that rematch in part because the Big 12 and Pac-12 messed up.

The Big 12 didn’t have a conference championship from 2011-16. Why? It didn’t have 12 teams needed to host a conference championship (per NCAA rules) following the departures of Nebraska and Colorado. Therefore, 11-1 Oklahoma State didn’t have a chance to get that 12th win in the regular season.

The Pac-12 Championship existed, but 11-1 Stanford didn’t play in it because it got smacked 53-30 by Pac-12 North division winner Oregon.

With Alabama, Oklahoma State and Stanford all at 11-1 having not played in conference championships, yes, it made sense to give the Crimson Tide the nod. Alabama had the best win (a blowout against eventual-No. 6 Arkansas) and the best loss, which was the aforementioned 9-6 game against that historically-dominant LSU team. Besides that LSU game, Alabama only had 1 other matchup decided by 2 scores or fewer, which came in a 27-11 win at ranked Penn State.

So if your whole argument to this is “well, Florida’s repeat was more impressive because Alabama didn’t even deserve to be there in 2011,” I’m gonna say come up with a new argument.

Speaking of the Gators, here’s another awful take to have about this argument.

“Florida lost a bunch of regular-season games and Alabama didn’t.”

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again for those who see nothing wrong with that take — basketball and football are vastly different sports. Who was the last Division I college basketball team to go undefeated? That was Indiana … in 1975-76. We’ve had 27 (!) undefeated college football national champions since then.

Besides the obvious — football has roughly 1/3 the games — look at some all-time great teams. Remember Tyler Hansbrough’s UNC squad that dominated its way to a national title in 2008-09? It lost 4 games. How about Anthony Davis and that 2011-12 Kentucky team? They still lost twice.

Regular-season losses happen. And for what it’s worth, not even Alabama was immune to that. The Crimson Tide weren’t even undefeated in either of those 2 championship years. Were they still an all-time great team? Sure, but let’s not use “regular-season losses” as deal-breaker for this cross-sport debate.

Thing I didn’t know/forgot until revisiting this debate

You know that Bill Belichick guy? Apparently he was tight not only with Saban, but also with Donovan. Belichick was there to support his pal back in the 2007 title game, and he even jumped to his feet and cheered while rocking a Gators visor (!) when Florida was in the midst of a 2nd-round NCAA Tournament win against Pitt in 2014.

The other thing I forgot was related to Kentucky’s pursuit of Donovan. Much like Texas wanted Saban, the Wildcats were rumored to be after Donovan after the repeat season. Donovan didn’t even fully deny it after the 2007 title, instead saying “there will be a time and place to address that.” He ultimately decided to stay at Florida after the 2007 season, but then the 2-day Orlando Magic thing happened.

Remember that?

Donovan came back to Florida only to be rumored to the Kentucky job again after the Billy Gillispie experiment failed in 2009. Instead, John Calipari took the job, and ironically enough, one of the reasons Donovan left Florida for the NBA in 2015 was reportedly because he was sick of recruiting against Kentucky.

Oh, the irony.

Where do I stand on the debate?

Let me make this clear. I can think 2 things at the same time.

I can think that we didn’t give that Alabama repeat enough credit because it wasn’t considered as “fun” as the Miami or USC dynasties. Like, we’re talking about a team that in 2 championship seasons, allowed only 3 teams to exceed 14 points. During that 2-year stretch, Alabama had more than twice as many shutouts (7) as it did games of allowing more than 14 points (3). That’s insane.

Does Alabama deserve more credit than writing them off as a boring team? In my opinion, yes.

But was it a more impressive repeat than Florida’s? For my money, no. That crown belongs to the Gators.

The degree of difficulty with Florida’s run was higher. I say that because we have a whole bunch of data to prove it.

Look at all the 21st century national champions in college football and how they fared the following season. Of those 20 teams, 11 finished the following season ranked in the top 4 of the Associated Press Poll. Seven played for a national championship, too.

Now look at all the 21st century champions in college basketball and how they fared the following season. Of those 20 teams, 2 of them made it to the Final Four the following year (2001 Michigan State and 2007 Florida). How many played for a national title? Just 2007 Florida. That’s right. (Butler made it to consecutive title games but lost both times. UNC won the 2017 NCAA title after losing the 2016 final.) The Gators are still the only national champion in the 21st century to get to the title game the following season.

There’s a reason for that. In college basketball, teams that win national titles have players who can leave for the NBA. Even when the 1-and-done rule was put in place before the 2006-07 season, it still meant that anyone who exploded in March could head to the pros. In college football, more and more underclassmen are becoming stars in the sport — 7 of the past 13 Heisman Trophy winners were sophomores and Tim Tebow was the first sophomore to ever win the award in 2007 — but those underclassmen can’t bolt until they spent 3 years in college.

That’s why Florida’s 2006-07 team was so beloved. Even at the time, they were a rarity.

There’s also the basic construction of the postseason that favors Florida’s repeat.

In college football, the BCS system gave an 11-1 Alabama team a crack at the national title despite not having played in a conference title game or any sort of Playoff. Again, I believe Alabama was the deserving team, and the 21-0 beatdown of LSU proved that the Crimson Tide deserved to be there. There was still debate. And in 2012, Alabama dominated Notre Dame, but was Johnny Manziel’s Texas A&M squad the best in the country from November on? I know diehard Crimson Tide fans who would give the Aggies the edge.

You know what we never wondered about with Florida after they won either of their titles? Whether they were the best team in the country.

That’s what happens when you have a system with 6 do-or-die NCAA Tournament games, yes, but that’s also what happens when you only have 1 of those games decided by 2 scores or less. That’s what Florida did. They didn’t just “survive and advance.” They dominated, ran it back, and dominated some more.

That’s such a challenge in an ego-driven sport like college basketball. So many things could have gone wrong with that team in 2007 — Brewer tightens up with so much financial pressure associated with his NBA Draft stock, Noah gets jealous that Horford emerges as the more polished low-post player, Green and Humphrey start chucking in an effort to show that they belong in every conversation that involves Florida’s big 3, etc.

Any one of those things could have derailed Florida’s repeat, and it didn’t happen. I’m not sure Donovan can ever get enough credit for that.

Now if we’re comparing Alabama’s 3 titles in 4 years to Florida’s repeat, yeah, I’ll give the Crimson Tide the edge. That’s a bonkers modern-era feat that I think can stand the test of time, though Clemson was an LSU win away from doing that a couple of months ago, and USC was a Vince Young scamper from a 3-peat. The longer Alabama stands alone in that category, the more our appreciation of that feat will grow.

But if we’re just comparing repeats, the Gators chomp again.

Photo credit: @GatorsMKB, @AlabamaFTBL