|
Title: ESPN: Alabama-Florida needs to be special again Post by: pmull on September 26, 2011, 03:15:00 PM Dubbed by some as the next great rivalry in all of sports, the Alabama-Florida game became the premier matchup for two straight years.
It started with a bone-crushing, all-out brawl inside the Georgia Dome in 2008 -- one Florida escaped thanks to quarterback Tim Tebow dragging his team through Hell and back. Florida was propelled into the national championship game, which it won, and sent No. 1 Alabama slinking home. Almost a year later to the day, Alabama exacted revenge in a game hyped beyond the title game for essentially being another semifinal for the national championship. Both teams were undefeated, with top-ranked Florida looking for repeat appearances in the national championship, but Alabama played vengeful spoiler by completely blindsiding Florida, throttling the Gators 32-13. Alabama was national championship bound and Florida was left with a tarnished ego and the lasting image of Tebow crying on the stadium scoreboards as Bama fans roared with cheers. Last year, these teams met in the regular season in a game generating the same sort of buzz as the last two. It got prime-time billing as a herd of national media descended on Tuscaloosa, Ala. Alabama creamed Florida 31-6 and the rivalry lost some glitz, as both teams went their separate ways. http://espn.go.com/blog/sec/post/_/id/28986/we-need-florida-alabama-to-be-special |