The latest installment in one of college football's most intense rivalries arrives on Saturday.
No. 8 Alabama (7-1) hosts No. 14 LSU (6-2) at 7:45 p.m. ET inside a sold-out Bryant-Denny Stadium. ESPN's College GameDay pregame show will be on location, while the game will air on CBS. Plenty of viewers are expected to tune in for a game that will have implications on not only the SEC West but on the College Football Playoff race.
But that has come to be expected in this series. It will be the 88th meeting between the conference foes, though the magnitude of the rivalry has undoubtedly heated up since Nick Saban took over as Alabama's head coach.
Here's how Alabama has performed against LSU with Saban on its sideline.
Saban's Alabama Record vs. LSU
Saban's first-head coaching stop in the SEC came when LSU hired him away from Michigan State ahead of the 2000 season. The nine-time National Coach of the Year inherited a program that hadn't won an outright conference championship since 1986 or a national title since 1958.
But Saban quickly brought both of those trophies back to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
In five seasons leading the Tigers, Saban compiled a record of 48-16, winning two SEC titles and a national championship. He went 4-1 in five meetings with Alabama. But then the NFL came calling. Saban bolted to the Miami Dolphins, where he spent two seasons before ultimately making his return to college football in 2007 with the Crimson Tide.
Going into Saturday's game, Saban has won 201 games and eight SEC titles at Alabama. And that success has carried over to the Alabama-LSU series. The 72-year-old is 12-5 against LSU since arriving in Tuscaloosa. That being said, LSU accounts for nearly 20 percent of Saban's losses at Alabama (28 over 17 seasons).
Alabama leads the all-time series against LSU 55-27-5.
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Memorable Alabama-LSU Moments Under Saban
Saban's first Alabama-LSU game wearing crimson didn't go so well. Les Miles, who replaced Saban at LSU after he left for the pros, took his Tigers team into Tuscaloosa and beat Alabama, 41-34, in 2007. LSU went on to win the BCS National Championship that season.
Saban lost three of his first five meetings with LSU, in what is sometimes referred to as the "Nick Saban Bowl," after taking the Alabama job. That includes a matchup that was billed as the "Game of the Century." The stakes in the series may have never been higher than during the 2011 season. No. 2 Alabama hosted No. 1 LSU that November in one of the most anticipated sporting events in recent memory.
The Tigers won 9-6 in overtime. But the Crimson Tide got their revenge.
Alabama won the rematch, 21-0, in the BCS National Championship Game in New Orleans, one of six titles Saban has won with the school. That win marked the first of eight straight wins for Alabama in the series.
LSU wouldn't win against Alabama again until 2019, when eventual Heisman winner Joe Burrow led the Tigers to a 46-41 victory in Tuscaloosa. Burrow threw for 393 yards and three touchdowns in the win, while Alabama's Tua Tagovailoa went for 418 yards, four scores and an interception. Dozens of future NFL players appeared in the game, from Justin Jefferson and Ja'Marr Chase for LSU to Trevon Diggs and DeVonta Smith for Alabama. The list goes on.
LSU and Alabama have split their last four meetings since 2019.
The Tigers won in overtime last year, 32-31, when quarterback Jayden Daniels scored on a 25-yard run, then connected with tight end Mason Taylor for the game-winning two-point conversion.
LSU Can Make History With Win Saturday
Alabama rarely loses at all under Saban, though especially not to the same team in consecutive years. Since 2007, only two coaches have toppled the Crimson Tide in back-to-back campaigns, according to the Daily Advertiser — Miles in 2010-11 and former Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze in 2014-15.
LSU coach Brian Kelly can join that exclusive company with a win on Saturday.
Kelly's win against Alabama last year came in his first season in Baton Rouge. Saban's Alabama teams beat Kelly twice by a combined score of 73-28 in two meetings when the latter coached Notre Dame—once in the BCS title game and once in the College Football Playoff semifinals.
Since the "Game of the Century," Alabama is 10-0 against LSU when it holds the Tigers to 17 points or fewer and 0-2 when allowing more than that.
But that could be a tough task to accomplish this season. The Tigers are scoring 47.4 points per game this season, the most in the country. Daniels, a Heisman Trophy candidate, has accounted for 30 total touchdowns (25 passing and five rushing) through eight games.
"He killed us last year," Saban said of Daniels this week, via On3. "The guy was a really, really good player last year. He's a really, really good player now. I think overall they execute their offense to perfection, and it starts with him because he makes the right reads relative to runs and passes and zone-option plays and pass-down plays. He's very good at reading coverages, makes really quick decisions.
"All those things were evident last year, I think, by the way he played, and I think he's probably even better now because he has even more experience and knowledge in the offense. And they've got really good players around him."
Daniels would be the first QB to beat a Saban-coached Alabama team in consecutive starts, and the first signal-caller to beat Saban in back-to-back seasons since Florida's Rex Grossman in 2000 and 2001, per the Daily Advertiser.
Alabama enters the game as a three-point favorite, per Caesars Sportsbook.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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