Alabama-Florida SEC Championship Postgame Notebook

Postgame notebook from No. 1 Alabama’s 54-16 victory over No. 15 Florida in the 25th SEC Championship Game at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Ga.

Saturday’s game against Florida was Alabama’s 1,245th college football game. That figure takes into account games both forfeited and vacated per NCAA rulings. Without accounting for those stipulations, the game was actually Alabama’s 1,267th football game. With the victory over the Gators, Alabama has won three consecutive SEC titles for the third time in its history and the first time since 1977-78-79. Alabama’s other SEC title streaks include winning five straight (1971-72-73-74-75) and three straight (1964-65-66).

With the victory, Alabama’s actual, on-field record in SEC games is 406-167-20 (.702). With the victory, the Tide’s actual on-field record in all games is 906-317-44 (.732), including a mark of 85-10 (.895) this decade. With the win over the 15th-ranked Gators, Alabama has defeated 15 consecutive ranked opponents dating back to a loss to Ole Miss in September of 2015. Alabama’s all-time record against ranked opponents is 153-124-7 (.551). Alabama is 124-75-3 (.621) as a ranked team playing a ranked opponent.

Saturday’s game was televised by CBS and the Tide is 69-43-1 (.621) all-time in games televised by CBS. The victory improved Alabama’s record against Florida to 25-14-0 (.641) all-time, accounting for a vacated victory in 2005. The actual, on-field series record is 26-14-0 (.650) in favor of the Crimson Tide. Alabama has won the last six meetings in the series dating back to a 31-20 loss in the 2008 SEC Championship Game. Alabama and Florida have met in the SEC Championship Game nine times with the Crimson Tide holding 5-4 advantage in those contests. Since Nick Saban took over as Alabama’s head coach in 2007, the Tide has won six of seven against the Gators, including the last six consecutive. Alabama is 12-8-0 (.600) against Florida when the Gators are nationally ranked.

Alabama captured its 26th conference football championship – and its third consecutive championship – with today’s 54-16 win over Florida. Alabama won the first SEC championship during the 1933 season as head coach Frank Thomas led the Crimson Tide to 5-0-1 conference record. Thomas led Alabama to four SEC championships. Paul “Bear” Bryant directed the Crimson Tide to six national championships and 13 SEC titles during his 25-year run in Tuscaloosa. Alabama won five straight SEC championships from 1971-75 and captured eight of the 10 SEC championships from 1970-79. In addition to Thomas and Bryant, Alabama has had five other coaches win SEC championships, including Harold “Red” Drew (1953), Bill Curry (1989), Gene Stallings (1992), Mike DuBose (1999) and Nick Saban (2009, 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016). In addition to its 26 SEC championships, Alabama also won four Southern Conference titles (1924, 1925, 1926 and 1930), giving the school 31 conference football championships.

Alabama head coach Nick Saban has won his last nine “championship” games with wins over Florida (2009, 2015, 2016), Georgia (2012) and Missouri (2014) in the SEC Championship and victories over Texas (2009), LSU (2011), Notre Dame (2012) and Clemson (2015) in national championship contests. Overall, Saban is 12-1 in those games at Alabama and LSU with seven SEC titles and five national titles.