The Tide and Gators will meet for the eighth time in the history SEC Championship Game history
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The University of Alabama football team remained indoors for the second day, working again in full pads for two hours inside the Hank Crisp Indoor Facility to prepare for Florida in this weekend’s SEC Championship Game.
Alabama and Florida meet in Atlanta for the conference championship. It will mark the 10th time the Crimson Tide will play in the game, while Florida will make its league-leading 11th appearance. CBS will once again carry all the action with Verne Lundquist, Gary Danielson and Allie LaForce working the broadcast.
The Crimson Tide own the advantage in the overall series, 24-14 (25-14 actual), but UF holds the 4-3 lead in the SEC Championship Game meetings. The initial matchup favored the Tide, 28-21, in front of a record crowd of 83,091 fans back in 1992. The very next year Florida earned the 28-13 victory and followed that up with a second straight win, 24-23, over the Crimson Tide in 1994. The 1996 matchup went to the Gators once again, 45-30, but Alabama bounced back for a 34-7 victory in the 1999 installment.
Alabama and Florida met as the Nos. 1 and 2 teams in the 2008 meeting, with Tim Tebow leading the Gators to a 31-20 win in Atlanta. The Crimson Tide countered the very next season with a 32-13 win to send top-ranked Florida home and earn No. 2 Alabama a trip to Pasadena, Calif., for the 2009 BCS National Championship Game. The Tide took down Texas in that game to earn Nick Saban his first national title at Alabama.
Thursday will mark the final full practice for Alabama before the team heads to Atlanta on Friday. The individual awards season begins the next week, with numerous members of the Crimson Tide due to appear at various ceremonies in hopes of bringing home hardware for the Alabama football program.
