For all the Game(s) of the Century and Saban Bowls, all the SEC West battles and national championships, there has never been an LSU-Alabama battle like the one that will take place this weekend. The College Football Playoff kicks off on Saturday evening in Death Valley.
Alabama (6-2, 3-2 in SEC) travels to Baton Rouge to take on LSU (6-2, 3-1) with a CFP playoff berth likely on the line. Although the two teams have identical records, Alabama is ranked 11th in the first CFP series and LSU is ranked 15th, mainly due to Alabama’s win over Georgia in September. But as that win continues to fade in the rearview, Alabama and LSU both need to avoid that crucial third loss.
The two teams have met 88 times since 1895, with Alabama leading the rivalry 56-27-6. No season defines the Alabama-LSU rivalry quite like 2011, when No. 1 LSU beat No. 2 Alabama 9-6 in the regular season…and then, thanks to the magic of adversity, voters, computers and the BCS, a rematch took place Alabama’s way in January. Eight years later, with LSU and Alabama once again ranked No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, the Tigers’ Joe Burrow defeated the Tide’s Tua Tagovailoa, knocking Alabama out of the playoff hunt as part of LSU’s outright dominance of 2019 college football. season.
This year the college football giants are in Georgia and Oregon, not Alabama and Louisiana. The Tigers and Tide have both struggled with inconsistency and focus that directly led to their two losses. LSU fell in its debut game to what turned out to be a sloppy USC team, then dropped the battle for the SEC lead with Texas A&M. Alabama got clobbered by Tennessee State, lost in a historic upset to Vanderbilt and then ran out of gas against the Volunteers.
Both coaches said the right things leading up to the game. “Every week in the SEC is an incredible challenge, and one we will have to meet with the best game of the year,” LSU head coach Brian Kelly said this week. “There’s a lot of excitement now that GameDay is here, and especially a nationally televised prime-time game creates a lot of excitement. But you have to do your preparation excellently and concentrate on playing four quarters of excellent football.”
“I see a team with great athletes, offensively, defensively and explosively,” Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer said of LSU. “Well supervised. I’ve been through fire, home, away, close games.”
The Tide have prepared to play in one of the most hostile environments in college football. “The offense is tired of hearing a speaker the last two weeks,” DeBoer said on his call-in show “Hey Coach.” “Probably some hearing loss over the last two weeks.”
That might be for the best, considering the words Tiger fans will have for the Tide. There’s a bit of a hate mismatch here; LSU fans often consider Alabama their most hated rival, while Alabama fans place LSU well behind Auburn, Tennessee, and possibly even Georgia on the list of most hated programs. That’s partly because Nick Saban left LSU for the NFL after winning a championship for the Tigers… and then turned around and returned to the SEC West when Alabama opened a bank vault for him in 2006.
Alabama’s relative disdain for the Tigers stems from the fact that, well, the Tide got Saban… and also from the fact that Alabama largely owned LSU during the Saban era; the Tide had a 13-5 record, including the national championship game, against LSU since Saban’s first season at Alabama.
But Saban is no longer on the sidelines, even as Kelly hints that Saban is still the “man behind the curtain” in Alabama, as Kelly said this week. “I don’t want to take anything away from Coach DeBoer because it’s his team,” Kelly added, “but you can feel a little bit of Nick there.”
Alabama could use a little of the old Saban magic on the sidelines; The team’s inconsistency and inefficiency have been reflected on both sides of the ball. Quarterback Jalen Milroe already has as many interceptions (6) as he did last season. And Alabama as a team ranks 128th out of 134 in penalties per game; only Ole Miss is worse in the SEC.
Meanwhile, LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier is thriving; he leads the SEC in both completions and attempts, and his 20 touchdowns are seven more than Milroe’s so far. (One quirky footnote: Nussmeier’s father, Doug Nussmeier, was Saban’s offensive coordinator on the 2013 national championship team, when Alabama eliminated a Notre Dame team coached by… Brian Kelly. “Yes, he brought it up ,” Kelly laughed on Wednesday. “And I told him to shut up and not bring it up again.”)
Alabama is a 2.5-point favorite going into the game, but it’s worth noting that Kelly is 13-0 in many night games at LSU. Someone is going to ruin someone else’s year in Death Valley on Saturday night, just a little earlier than usual.
