No. 1 vs. No. 2 in SEC championship game

The winner of the Alabama-Florida contest will play for the national championship.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

ATLANTA — This is what the Southeastern Conference had in mind when it started college football’s first league championship game back in 1992.

No. 1 vs. No. 2. The Crimson Tide vs. the Gator Chomp. Nick Saban carrying on the tradition of the Bear vs. Urban Meyer and his new-age spread offense.

Top-ranked Alabama (12-0) and second-ranked Florida (11-1) finished off the regular season with resounding wins to set up the SEC’s most anticipated title game ever, a contest at the Georgia Dome Saturday afternoon in what essentially serves as a semifinal for the BCS championship.

The winner is all but assured of a spot in the Jan. 8 title game at Miami.

“We’re extremely proud of the way our team finished the season,” said Saban, the coach who needed only two years to restore Alabama to national prominence.

“To win 12 games in a season is pretty special to any group of players.”

Now, it’s on to the Georgia Dome for a game that should have a bit of a Kumbayah feel for the Crimson Tide. On that very same field, they opened the season with a 34-10 blowout of Clemson, a team that was ranked in the top 10 and expected to win the Atlantic Coast Conference.

The Tigers never recovered — and the Tide never looked back. Bama built a stunning 31-0 halftime lead on preseason No. 1 Georgia, survived an overtime thriller against LSU in Saban’s return to his former school, and blew out Auburn 36-0 this past weekend to emphatically snap a six-year losing streak to its most bitter rival.

Next up is the stiffest challenge yet.

Other than a stunning 31-30 loss to Mississippi in late September, Florida has not been seriously challenged by anyone. The Gators are the nation’s third highest-scoring team (46.3 points per game) and their 11 wins have come by an average margin of 37.3.

Even though Alabama is unbeaten, it likely will go into the game as an underdog.

Many are already sneaking a peak at what would appear to be the most appealing national championship possibility, a better-bring-your-calculator matchup between the Gators and No. 4 Oklahoma, which leads the nation with a 53.3-point scoring average heading into the Big 12 championship game against Missouri.

Saban shrugged off that sort of speculation.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said Sunday evening. “

Florida has played really well and scored a lot of points. They haven’t even had a close game other than the Ole Miss game. They are a dominant team. They deserve all the accolades their team gets, because they’ve played extremely well all year long.”

ACC

RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia Tech is known for using big plays on defense and special teams to turn the tide of football games, but the Hokies will face a similar foe in the ACC championship.

Boston College (9-3, 5-3) will come into Saturday’s title game in Tampa, Fla., having gotten at least one touchdown from defense or special teams in seven consecutive games.

“It’s like Virginia Tech!” Eagles coach Jeff Jagodzinski said Sunday, as if trying to deflect attention from his team’s remarkable streak.

“When you look at, through the years, at Virginia Tech’s defense, they’ve won a lot of ball games doing that,” Jagodzinski said.

Saturday’s game is a rematch of last year’s, and just like a year ago, the Hokies will be trying to make up for a defeat in the regular season.

This year, they lost 28-23 at BC on Oct. 18 after returning two interceptions for touchdowns, but allowing a 65-yard punt return TD by Rich Gunnell that gave the Eagles the lead for good.