Urban Meyer and Nick Saban are two of the most notorious college football coaches of all time.
During the mid to late 2000s, both began their takeover of the Southeastern Conference when Meyer took the Florida job and Alabama hired Saban .
In just his second season, Meyer won his first national championship as head coach of the Gators.
When his team steamrolled through their regular season in 2008, Saban's Crimson Tide opposed Meyer's Florida in the SEC title. The Gators scored 14 unanswered in the fourth quarter on their way to Meyer's second national championship.
The very next season, the two teams again clashed in Atlanta for the SEC Championship.
This time, it was Saban's squad who walked out triumphant and proceeded to hoist the national championship trophy.
The legendary coaching duo discussed their title bouts on Meyer's college football podcast, The Triple Option .
"Mark (Ingram) and I spend a lot of time talking about those '08, '09 (teams)," Meyer said. "And you look back, coach, you know in my lifetime, those two teams when they jogged out on the field, that was as good of football as I've ever seen in my lifetime."
Saban began by praising the SEC Championship game for being one of one.
"I've always said that the SEC Championship game is almost like a playoff game," Saban said. "The '08, '09 games, I think in '08 you guys were No. 1 we were two. The next year it might have been vice versa, but I know we were one and two (in the rankings)."
Saban praised the players on his team that were homegrown, and built the foundation for the program.
"The thing I loved about the '08 and '09 teams from our perspective at Alabama, those guys all came to Alabama when we weren't any good," Saban said. "Mark, Julio (Jones), and a lot of the players that were on the field all came, Dont'a Hightower, they all came when we weren't very good. They all had something to prove."
Those players who believed in Saban ultimately catapulted themselves into household names during the 2009 title run.
"And obviously the '08 game was, you know, Tebow was fantastic. (We) couldn't get off the field on third down, that's all I can remember, especially in the second half" Saban said. "And then in that '09 game, our big strategy change was we were going to rush five guys as much as we could, make him throw it and see if we could guard everybody. We couldn't guard everybody but we did it well enough to be able to win the game."
Tebow and the Gators were held to zero points in the entire second half of that game and the Crimson Tide ended their undefeated season.
"And I thought that was probably one of the greatest team efforts," Saban said. "And of all the teams, that team came together in that game as well as any I'd ever coached. And we needed to because you (Meyer) had such a great team at Florida."
The Crimson Tide went on to wallop Texas 37-21 in the Rose Bowl to lift the first of six national championships during Saban's tenure at Alabama.
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