2015 SEC Championship Game: Alabama and Florida is Familiar Matchup

Alabama and Florida will meet for the 2015 SEC Championship in Atlanta on Saturday. If this feels like a familiar matchup for the game, well, it should.

This year makes 11 appearances for UF and ten for Bama. Four teams—Auburn, Georgia, LSU, and Tennessee—are tied for third in appearances with just five. This weekend's participants at least double the number of times playing in the game of any other team in the league.

Fittingly, the Crimson Tide versus the Gators is the most common pairing of teams in the game. This will be the eighth time the two have played, showing that when one makes it, the other usually does too. Alabama's recent SECCG bouts with Georgia and Missouri are its only without UF on the other sideline. Florida has also played Arkansas twice and Auburn once when not facing the Tide. The next-most common matchup in the game is Georgia-LSU, which has happened just three times.

Here is a brief overview of how the other seven games between the teams have gone:

• 1992: Antonio Langham broke a tie by returning a Shane Matthews interception for a touchdown with just over three minutes to go to give the Tide a 28-21 win in the inaugural game.
• 1993: Steve Spurrier gets his revenge with a 28-13 win in the last of two SEC title games played at Legion Field. Auburn went 8-0 in conference play, but the Tide appeared in the game thanks to the Tigers being on probation.
• 1994: Chris Doering saves the day, completing a long trick pass play and catching the subsequent two-yard touchdown pass late to give the Gators a 24-23 win. It was one of two SEC Championship Games to have been decided by a single point, with the other being 1997's Tennessee 30, Auburn 29 finish.
• 1996: The Gators won 45-30 en route to setting several game records that survive to this day. Danny Wuerffel's 401 yards and six touchdown passes haven't been beat, nor have Reidel Anthony's 11 catches for 171 yards. Only the 101 points in 2013's absurd Auburn-Missouri game have exceeded the 75 total scored in this one.
• 1999: Bama finally took back the crown in dominating 34-7 fashion. The Tide ran for 300 yards on only 49 carries (6.1 YPC).
• 2008: After eight title games without the two meeting, the foes squared off again. Tim Tebow led his team to a 31-20 victory over the previously unbeaten Crimson Tide despite being without the injured Percy Harvin.
• 2009: Both teams came to this one undefeated, but Alabama's 32-13 win removed all doubt as to which was the better team. It reduced Tebow to tears on the sideline and helped lead to the first of Urban Meyer's resignations from UF.

If Alabama wins as expected this weekend, it'll move the SEC Championship Game record between the two programs to an even 4-4. If the Tide then goes on to win the national championship, it'd be the fifth time in the eight games these two have played for the SEC crown that the winner went on to do so.