LSU vs Alabama 2011: Tigers on Track to Replicate Past BCS Successes

Nick Saban and Les Miles—they're much more than just coaching adversaries on opposite sidelines of the much-anticipated biggest game in the history of mankind between LSU and Alabama.

They're the two men most qualified to speak about this year's Tigers team looking eerily like the ones that captured BCS national championships in 2003 and 2007.

Saban, the current head coach of the Crimson Tide, was the big man on campus in Baton Rouge back when the Bayou Bengals finished the season at No. 1 in the polls for the first time since 1958.

Granted, it wasn't in both polls, since the Associated Press picked USC to be its champion after the Trojans were "relegated" to the Rose Bowl to make way for a tilt between LSU and Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl.

That Tigers team was loaded with talent on both sides of the ball. Running backs Joseph Addai and Justin Vincent carried the load behind redshirt junior Matt Mauck, who at one time was a backup to Marcus Randall. The defense benefited from tremendous play all over the field, from Kyle Williams and Chad Lavalais up front to a dominant defensive backfield led by LaRon Landry and Corey Webster.

Together, those players manhandled former Heisman Trophy winner Jason White and the Sooners on the way to a 21-14 victory.

The faces changed between 2003 and 2007, but the story on the field remained much the same. In just his third season in Baton Rouge, Les Miles molded another gifted squad into a crystal football hoister. Those Bayou Bengals had an experienced quarterback of their own in Matt Flynn, who'd spent almost his entire collegiate career to that point serving as JaMarcus Russell's backup, and a pair of punishing 'backs in Jacob Hester and Keiland Williams.

The 2007 edition didn't have quite as many names to drop in the secondary (aside from safety Craig Steltz) but more than made up for it with yet another beastly defensive line led by Glenn Dorsey, Ricky Jean-Francois and Tyson Jackson. That group of players proved more than strong enough to pick apart a solid Ohio State team in the 2008 BCS National Championship Game with a 38-24 victory at the Louisiana Superdome.

Which, another four years later, brings us to the present day. Another redshirt senior at quarterback (Jarrett Lee) who bided his time behind a dual-threat thrower (Jordan Jefferson), another dynamic duo of ball carriers (Spencer Ware and Michael Ford), another stacked defense (Tyrann Mathieu, Morris Claiborne and Kevin Minter).

Another national championship? Alabama will have something to say about that first, but if history holds true to form, they'll be dancing in the Bayou when the Tigers snag another title in New Orleans.