LSU and Alabama will play on Saturday night. It will be the 16th time in 18 meetings that both enter this one ranked. In that same span, this will mark the 13th meeting where both are ranked in the top 15.
Every year, this is one of college football’s best heavyweight fights. It wasn’t a rivalry born of proximity or borderlines, but about what it has meant to the sport.
You won’t find the pure old-fashioned hate you see with Alabama and Auburn or Ohio State and Michigan, yet this game became a measuring stick for both programs. It’s where we sort the contenders from the pretenders. And more often than not, it’s Alabama coming out on top.
Most LSU fans won’t admit this, but Alabama is the standard LSU finds itself chasing.
[autotag]Charles McClendon[/autotag] won 137 games as LSU’s head coach, more than any other man. Yet, he beat Alabama just twice.
It was the downfall of [autotag]Les Miles[/autotag], who went 5-2 in his first seven against Alabama, before losing his final five games against the Tide. Miles entered four of those games with top 10 ranked teams. It didn’t matter.
[autotag]Ed Orgeron[/autotag] knew it when he took the job.
“You are judged by that game. That’s the nature of the beast. I welcome it and I bring it on and I can’t wait until the day that we beat those guys,” Orgeron said in his introductory press conference in 2016.
“That is the benchmark every day we go to work.”
And in 2019, Orgeron led his team into Tuscaloosa and beat ‘Bama in what would be the defining moment of his LSU career.
[autotag]Brian Kelly[/autotag] knew it, too, when he replaced Orgeron. And in Year 1, Kelly got that win, upsetting Alabama in Tiger Stadium.
And now, Kelly will be asked to do it again. With a win on Saturday night, LSU can creep back into the College Football Playoff hunt despite its two losses.
But it would mean much more than that. It would mark the first back-to-back wins over Alabama since 2010 and 2011 and make LSU 3-2 in its last five against the Tide.
It would assert LSU’s position atop the SEC West, leaving no doubts about who runs this division now.
These are the games that come to define a program.
Win Saturday, and people in Baton Rouge will quickly forget about LSU’s September letdowns.
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