The SEC Champion Will Be The One Who Can Play It's Kind of Game

How many times in life have you heard an announcer at a sporting venue say, "He's making his opponent fight his kind of fight."?  The winner of the SEC Championship Game may be the one who forces the other team to fight their kind of fight.

It's flash and gash versus bash and crash.  If Florida gets Alabama into a track meet, Bama stands to lose.  If Alabama can get Florida into a toe-to-toe slugfest then the Gators will be beaten.  A low scoring game benefits the Tide, a high scoring one favors Florida.

The absolute worst case scenario for Florida is to have less than a seven point lead with Alabama getting the ball with about four minutes or so left.  Alabama has shown time and again that it can eat the clock and pound the ball on a tired defense and score.

The worst case scenario for Alabama is to have Florida jump out to a three score lead and force John Parker Wilson into passing situations against a zone defense.  It could get ugly in a hurry.

Nick Saban, Kevin Steele, and surprisingly Will Muschamp have come up with ideas to throttle the Gator offense.  Will Muschamp (former Auburn defensive mind, now head coach in-waiting at Texas) knows a little about stopping Tebow and the Gators.  No defensive coach has had better success.  He recently shared a few ideas with Alabama coaches.

Slowing the Gators is the key.  You're not going to shut them out for even a half like Bama did Georgia and other teams.

The key for Florida may be to swallow their pride and admit that they won't be able to run against the Tide.  Nobody has.  You can run enough to keep them honest, but you won't beat Alabama running the ball. 

Tebow will have to beat them with his arm, his legs and his wit.  He can't afford mistakes.  He has shown countless times that he's up for this task.  Alabama's defense has not been shell shocked all year long.  They've never doubted themselves up to now.

A couple of really quick scoring drives may rattle their confidence just enough to burst the dam that's held so well this year.  "This is by far the best defense we've seen this year," said Tebow, "But there are cracks that we feel can exploit."

The mutual admiration society goes to Alabama too, where Rashad Johnson says, "Tebow and Florida is the best offense we've played so far.  They have so many plays they run out of similar looking sets that you have to be 100 percent focused 100 percent of the time."

Both can count on seeing some looks they haven't seen so far this year.  Both coaches are masters at disguising plays 'til the last second.  If fact, both coaches mirror their teams to a certain extent.

Meyer loves to work with the offense and come up with plays that cause the defense to misread the play on the initial snap.  Saban believes in owning the line first and disguising rush patterns to create mismatches. 

As the teams play their game out, so will the coaches be playing their own chess game against one another using the players as pieces.  In the end, though, it will be team that either can or can't play it's own type of game.  And what a game it will be.