SEC Championship Game: 5 best games of all-time
By John Buhler
2. 1994: No. 6 Florida Gators 24, No. 3 Alabama Crimson Tide 23
It was only the third SEC Championship Game, but the 1994 contest between the No. 6 Florida Gators and the No. 3 Alabama Crimson Tide goes down as one of the best in the event’s history.
This was the first SEC Championship Game to be played at the Georgia Dome. Keep in mind that the 1992 and 1993 games were played at Legion Field in Birmingham. The Georgia Dome would house the SEC Championship Game every year from 1994 to 2016. Next season, it will still be in Atlanta, but next door at brand-new Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
To prove that the 1993 game was no fluke, Florida head coach Steve Spurrier would outlast Alabama’s Gene Stallings in a chess match to win by one point in Atlanta, 24-23. Spurrier would rattle of his second of four straight SEC Championships.
He would appear in seven as Florida’s head coach and win five. Spurrier would get to an eighth game as the head coach of the 2010 South Carolina Gamecocks. The SEC just needs to name the conference championship trophy after Spurrier, in all honesty.
This game would signify a change of guard in the SEC. Florida would become the predominant program over Alabama. Tennessee and later Georgia would headline a decade of SEC dominance until Nick Saban left East Lansing for Baton Rouge.
A tight, one-point game with two of the best SEC coaches at the time going toe-to-toe in a major venue in a southern metropolis helping bring SEC football to the mainstream. Without the success of the 1994 game between Florida and Alabama in Atlanta, would there be conference championships across all of college football today? This game laid the foundation modern Southeastern college football.