The SEC Championship Game has been a lot of things to a lot of people during its 24 years of exuberant existence.
It's been a cash cow adorned with 24-karat cowbells. It's been an annual reunion of friends and legends from the good old days before the SEC expanded to become a football industrial complex.
It's been a weekend-long celebration of the sport the Deep South knows and loves the best, and it's been justification for everyone from Roy Kramer to Steve Spurrier to Nick Saban.
On the 25th anniversary of Kramer's baby, though, it might be worth noting the one thing the SEC Championship Game hasn't been, at least not very often.
It hasn't been a great football game, which is strange because no one produces more great games that inspire everything from nicknames to paintings than the SEC.
From Labor Day weekend through the Thanksgiving holiday.
That's not likely to change today as unbeaten No. 1 Alabama prepares to do bodily harm to three-loss No. 15 Florida. The only real drama in the last one of these affairs to be conducted in the Georgia Dome is whether it'll be Lane Kiffin's last game on the Alabama sideline.
Maybe Kiffin, for old times' sake, will call a jet sweep with a big lead in the final minute. Maybe Saban, as a going-away present, will bite off Kiffin's ear and spit it in his eye.The marriage between Lane Kiffin and Nick Saban was never meant to last forever. After three years, with three games to go, it's likely coming to an end.
Otherwise, this SEC Championship Game figures to look a lot like most of the ones that preceded it. Expect the better team to win by a comfortable margin and the winners to identify themselves long before the final whistle.
How bad has this otherwise memorable event been as an actual competition? Only five of the first 24 games were decided by one score, and three of those went down in the first six years.
The best game may have been the 1992 inaugural when Spurrier and his underdog Florida Gators were tied with Gene Stallings and unbeaten No. 1 Alabama deep into the fourth quarter. Then came Antonio Langham and the most important pick six in Crimson Tide history. Final: Alabama 28-21.
Two years later, in the first SEC Championship Game in the Georgia Dome in 1994, Florida took down undefeated Alabama 24-23. Three years after that, Peyton Manning led Tennessee past Auburn 30-29.
Since then, they've played this game 18 times, and only twice was the final margin seven points or less. Les Miles and his damn strong LSU football team beat Tennessee 21-14 in 2007. Georgia came up 5 yards short on the final play against Alabama in a 32-28 thriller in 2012.
The last three of these games have been decided by 17, 29 and 14 points. That's not the stuff of championship games. It's more like the SEC vs. Conference USA.
Florida is an overwhelming underdog against Alabama, but it's not impossible to see an SEC Championship Game upset.
The real culprit? Far too infrequently, this game hasn't matched the two best teams in the league because they've resided in the same division, whether it was Florida and Tennessee in the 1990s or Alabama and LSU in the last decade.
Nothing illustrates the empty promise of this game more than the back-to-back meetings of Alabama and Florida in 2008 and 2009. For the first time, the SEC Championship Game gave us the top two teams in the nation in a potential Game of the Century - twice. What we didn't get on either occasion was a classic of Kick Six proportions. Neither game was in doubt in the final minute, although the first one had its moments.
Tim Tebow helped the Gators come from behind and pull away 31-20 in 2008. Rolando McClain made Tebow cry real tears the next year as Alabama dominated 32-13.
All told, the team with the better ranking entering this game is 18-6, and the average final margin has been 16.7 points and, excuse me, but has the ACC Championship Game started yet?
Let's face it. Among the league's stakeholders, the SEC Championship Game has been a roaring success for glad-handing corporate sponsors and bean-counting athletics directors.The SEC Year in Review sat down for breakfast with Mike Slive this week to talk retirement and college football. Slive is doing well after his battle with cancer and enjoying the SEC from afar. That distance gives him an excellent perspective.
For football fans? Meh. The game in Atlanta rarely delivers the way games in Tuscaloosa, Auburn and beyond do all fall. It's become a really good place to see the eventual national champions - 11 of them have walked this way - if only to see them make confetti angels.
Party on, Jalen Hurts. Party on, Greg Sankey.
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