SEC Championship Game: 5 reasons Florida has no chance vs Alabama
By John Buhler
The 2016 SEC Championship Game will be between the No. 1 Alabama Crimson Tide and the No. 15 Florida Gators. Here are five reasons it will be all Alabama.
It’s championship Saturday in college football. Several conference championships will be underway either Friday night or all day Saturday. One of the games on tap Saturday, Dec. 3 will be between the No. 1 Alabama Crimson Tide and the No. 15 Florida Gators. Kickoff from the Georgia Dome will be at 4:00 p.m. ET. CBS will have the telecast.
Alabama will be a massive 24-point favorite at a neutral-site. The Crimson Tide have a defense laden with almost nothing but upperclassmen. Florida struggles to score points against weak SEC defenses. This could be an all-time great defense that Alabama has this year.
Most outside of Central Florida expect Alabama to crush Florida on Saturday. Here are five reasons it will be all Alabama in 2016 SEC Championship Game.
5. Jim McElwain is a former coordinator under Nick Saban.
Let’s not forget about this one thing. Florida head coach Jim McElwain is of the Nick Saban coaching tree. While they specialize on other sides of the ball (McElwain with quarterbacks and Saban with defensive backs), they were on the same 2009 Alabama staff that beat the Texas Longhorns in the BCS National Championship.
Though McElwain and Saban are still cordial, Saban knows all of McElwain’s trick as an offensive mind. Not that there are many, as Florida is still rebuilding its putrid offense under its second-year head coach, but Saban doesn’t fret over what the Gators can do when they are in possession of the football.
Rarely will you see the pupil beat the student. McElwain has talent coaching at a blue-blood program like Florida, but he has only had two recruiting classes of his kind of players, all of which are underclassmen. Saban has been in Tuscaloosa for a decade. Alabama has been one of the greatest dynasties in college football since Saban’s arrival on campus in 2007.
Maybe McElwain will one day top Saban in a SEC Championship? He’ll need to get this offense looking somewhere even remotely competent for that to happen. The Gators can hold their own defensively, but McElwain isn’t beating Saban in 2016.