Tide eager to reclaim SEC dominance

ATLANTA -- Alabama's slump lasted all of one season.

After failing to reach either the SEC Championship Game or the College Football Playoff a year ago -- what qualifies as a subpar season in Tuscaloosa -- the Crimson Tide are back on track to claim another national title.

Nick Saban's top-ranked team (10-0) has successfully navigated -- dominated, actually -- an SEC-only gauntlet of a regular season brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Tide had won every game by at least 15 points. Its average margin of victory is a whopping 32.7 points.

Now, it's on to the league title game in Atlanta as a heavy favorite Saturday night against No. 7 Florida (8-2), which likely ruined its hopes of reaching the four-team playoff with a shocking home loss last weekend to LSU.

"It's been a very disruptive year from the whole covid standpoint," said Saban, who was stricken with the virus himself and couldn't coach in an Iron Bowl victory over rival Auburn. "But our players have done a good job of handling that, shown a lot of maturity."

Saban has built what is very likely the most dominant dynasty in college football history over his 14 years at Alabama.

Six SEC titles. Five national championships.

At age 69, he shows no signs of slowing down. Just this week, Alabama landed what appears to be the top-ranked recruiting class in the country for 2021.

"It's all part of the culture that we try to create," Saban said. "When people come here, that's the expectation that they have. That's what they buy into."

In his third year at Florida, Coach Dan Mullen led the Gators to the SEC title game for the first time since 2016 behind the dynamic passing of Kyle Trask, who has thrown for 40 touchdowns in the shortened season -- 10 more than anyone else in the country.

But Florida's hopes of reaching the national playoff likely ended with a 37-34 loss to LSU.

No two-loss team has reached the playoff since it began in 2014.

Mullen tried to sound a confident tone for the Gators, who were a 17-point underdog to the Crimson Tide.

"We'll think about that on Saturday night after we win," he said, perhaps providing some bulletin-board fodder for his opponent. "That's all we can control. What happens after that, we'll see what happens."