FAMILIAR MATCHUP
Alabama and Florida have met eight times previously in the SEC Championship game, with each team winning four.
1992: Alabama 28, Florida 21
1993: Florida 28, Alabama 13
1994: Florida 24, Alabama 23
1996: Florida 45, Alabama 30
1999: Alabama 34, Florida 7
2008: Florida 31, Alabama 20
2009: Alabama 32, Florida 13
2015: Alabama 29, Florida 15
(Note: The 1992 and 1993 games were played at Legion Field in Birmingham, Ala., the others at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.)
This week’s SEC Championship game — the last to be played in the Georgia Dome — will kick off a momentous month of college football in Atlanta.
The action starts at 4 p.m. Saturday with No. 1 Alabama vs. No. 15 Florida in the 25th SEC title game, the 23rd in the Dome, and ends Dec. 31 with a College Football Playoff semifinal in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl.
“I don’t think Atlanta has seen the enormousness of the college football games that are going to be played here in the next month,” said Gary Stokan, president and CEO of Peach Bowl Inc.
“When you’ve got the No. 1 team in the country playing potentially twice in Atlanta against a top-15 team and then a top-four team, all for the chance to play for a national championship, Atlanta is in for a treat with those two games.”
If heavily favored SEC West champ Alabama (12-0) beats SEC East champ Florida (8-3) on Saturday, the Crimson Tide will remain No. 1 in the playoff selection committee’s rankings and return to the Georgia Dome to play the No. 4 team in the Peach Bowl, which will host a national semifinal for the first time.
With or without Alabama, it’ll be the biggest game in the Peach Bowl’s 49-year history and, in Stokan’s judgment, the most significant college football game ever played in Atlanta.
This season’s other semifinal will be played in the PlayStation Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Ariz. The semifinal winners will meet in the national championship game in Tampa, Fla., on Jan. 9.
But first things first: one more SEC Championship game in the Georgia Dome before the event moves to the $1.5 billion stadium under construction next door.
The SEC’s marquee event, which began in Birmingham, Ala., in 1992, has been played in the Dome every year since 1994. The conference has agreed to play the game in the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium for at least the next 10 years, 2017 through 2026.
The Georgia Dome, which is slated for implosion next year, drew an appropriate matchup for its final SEC Championship game: Alabama and Florida met in Atlanta’s first SEC title game in 1994, as well as in the two games before that in Birmingham.
Saturday will be the ninth time in the event’s 25-year history that Alabama and Florida have met, including the seventh time in the 23 games in Atlanta. It’s the most frequent matchup in the event’s history.
“It’s two storied programs and two programs that year in and year out expect to be in Atlanta,” Florida coach Jim McElwain, a former Alabama offensive coordinator, said Sunday. “Part of that is a mindset and an understanding in the players that come to these schools. That’s another expectation they have — to always play that extra game there in December. And this year is no different.”
Alabama coach Nick Saban said the SEC Championship game is “a great competitive environment, one of the best in college football.”
“In my experience in the game, whether with LSU or here at Alabama, the only better competitive venue I ever (coached) in is the national championship game,” Saban said Sunday.
Including games against other opponents, Florida has reached the SEC title game a record 12 times and Alabama 11 times.
The teams are 4-4 against each other in the league title game, including 3-3 in Atlanta. Alabama has won the past two meetings, including a 29-15 victory last season.
Between this season’s SEC Championship game and the Peach Bowl, Atlanta will host another college football postseason event: the second annual Air Force Reserve Celebration Bowl at noon on Dec. 17, also in the Georgia Dome. The bowl matches the champions of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference and the Southwestern Athletic Conference.
North Carolina Central has clinched a berth in the bowl as the MEAC champion. Its opponent will be the winner of Saturday’s SWAC championship game in Houston between Grambling and Alcorn State.
The Celebration Bowl will be nationally televised on ABC and will be the first of this season’s 41 bowl games.
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