The Southeastern Conference features a lot of preliminaries this week. and then its game of the year, the same match-up as its 2011 game of the year.
Florida will play its final SEC game of the regular season. The Gators will try to get the clubhouse lead in the SEC East and force Georgia to win each of its last two games in order to win the division. Georgia's home date with Ole Miss is the first game in that tricky two-step. The East Division landscape will be very clear by 4 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday.
Then we can get on to the main order of business on Saturday: Alabama's visit to Tiger Stadium to take on LSU in the grand collision that shaped the 2011 college football season.
Alabama is the defending national champion in the sport, and yet, the Crimson Tide aren't the defending champion in the SEC or even in the SEC West Division itself. Yes, LSU won the West and the league in 2011, but because Alabama got into the BCS National Championship Game in New Orleans, the Tide were able to avenge their 9-6 overtime loss to the Bayou Bengals on home soil in Tuscaloosa, Ala. LSU produced the unblemished regular season in 2011, but Alabama was given a second chance in early January, and coach Nick Saban's team didn't miss. It prevented LSU's offense from crossing midfield until the second half. By that point, the Tide had amassed a multi-possession lead thanks to a string of field goals forged by superior field position. Alabama's defense swamped LSU's struggling, hiccupping offense, and the Tide's quarterback, A.J. McCarron, had enough time in the pocket to make surgical throws to a number of different receivers. Alabama gained a 15-0 stranglehold on the contest without scoring a touchdown in the game's first 55 minutes. It wasn't until the 56th minute that the Tide dented the end zone (for the only time in that contest), but the domination was clear and pronounced. The 21-0 victory gave Bama its second national crown in three seasons, lifting Saban to his third overall national championship. the first one flowing from his 2003 season at - yes, you guessed it - LSU.
Alabama is hoping that last season's BCS National Championship Game will repeat itself. If the Tide can give McCarron time to throw, and if LSU's offense - which has been well below average this season - remains stuck in the muck, we'll see a replay of the movie we saw in January, only with a different quarterback, Zach Mettenberger, presiding over an LSU meltdown. Saban, who is so fully loathed by LSU fans after abandoning the program in late December of 2004, could very well be on the verge of hoisting championship crystal for the third time in four seasons, and LSU is the team best situated to deny him that opportunity. The Tigers have to throttle McCarron and force him into committing turnovers. Such a scenario could certainly play out in Tiger Stadium under the lights, but it's apparent that LSU has much less margin for error than Alabama does. We'll see how this supreme showdown unfolds. nothing much other than a division, league, and national championship is on the line, after all.
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