SEC Championship Game: 5 best games of all-time
By John Buhler
4. 2008: No. 2 Florida Gators 31, No. 1 Alabama Crimson Tide 20
The SEC was in its glory years as a football power from roughly 2006 to 2014. From 2006 to 2012, the SEC won the BCS National Championship. 2013 featured an eighth-straight SEC team playing for a national title in the Auburn Tigers.
Not until the Ohio State Buckeyes stunned the Alabama Crimson Tide in the Sugar Bowl during the inaugural College Football Playoff would the other Power 5 conferences match the SEC’s overall dominance. Now one can argue that the Big Ten is the better conference over the SEC and it wouldn’t be wrong.
Perhaps the seminal SEC Championship Game that illustrated the conference’s decade-long dominance was the 2008 game between No. 2 Florida and No. 1 Alabama. Urban Meyer had made Florida national power once again after that Ron Zook thing that happened in Gainesville. Nick Saban decided that he couldn’t do whatever he wanted in the NFL with the Miami Dolphins. He left South Beach in favor of Tuscaloosa in 2007. One year later, he had Alabama on the doorstep of a national title.
Florida had already won a national title under Meyer in 2006 by shocking the No. 1 Ohio State Buckeyes. Alabama was a program on the rise under Saban. The Crimson Tide hadn’t been this good since the early 1990s under then head coach Gene Stallings.
Alabama would lead Florida 20-17 heading into the fourth quarter. After two marvelously executed drives by Florida quarterback Tim Tebow, the Gators would defeat the Crimson Tide 31-20 at the Georgia Dome.
Florida would beat the Oklahoma Sooners in the National Championship, the Gators’ last one under Meyer and most recent as a football program. Alabama would beat Texas for the national title in 2009. Under Saban would win three more: 2011 over LSU, 2012 over Notre Dame, and 2015 over Clemson.
Meyer would briefly retire before heading to Columbus to coach the Buckeyes. To this day, Meyer remains the only head coach that can consistently outwit Saban. In Tebow’s finest hour, Florida would win its seventh SEC Championship Game.