Greg McElroy recalls Alabama beating Florida in 2009 SEC Championship

Dec. 5, 2009 is a major date in modern college football history. Florida was trying to win its third SEC title in four years, and Alabama was trying to dethrone the Gators.

The Crimson Tide won that game, starting one of the best decade-plus long runs in college football history. ESPN analyst Greg McElroy remembers that night vividly and he recalled it on The Volume this week.

McElroy was Alabama’s quarterback from 2007-11 and said the Crimson Tide used their 2008 SEC Championship loss to Florida as motivation. The Gators weren’t even on Alabama’s regular season schedule — but that didn’t stop the Crimson Tide from thinking about that 2008 game all year.

“It was basically, the entire offseason was dedicated to figuring out, ‘OK, we have to do just a little bit more because we were 15 minutes shy of being able to punch our ticket to the national championship game and we’ve got to do a little bit more,'” McElroy said. “So a lot of the conversation in the locker room was about Florida.

“They weren’t on the regular season schedule, which, thinking back on it, I can’t believe we were talking about a team that we weren’t even scheduled to play. But when we got to that game, it was almost as if we’d had 365 days of frustration and preparation in order to get over the hump.”

As if they needed added motivation, the Alabama players had a special movie night before the big game.

“We watched ‘Miracle’ the night before the game because Florida, to us, they were the Soviets,” McElroy said. “They were the gold standard. … They were looking at trying to win three out of four and we were the only ones really standing in [their] way.”

Greg McElroy: ‘A lot of people didn’t really give us much of a chance’ vs. Florida in 2009

McElroy also recalled what the experts were saying about the game and how Florida had the better quarterback with Tim Tebow under center. He then channelled his inner Michael Jordan, turning those statements into a championship performance.

“A lot of people didn’t really give us much of a chance,” McElroy said. “They said the rosters are comparable, the one difference being the quarterback spot where Florida has a massive advantage. So I took that personally and I had one of the best games of my career that night, as well.

“It was really emphatic because it was a passing of the torch and it really kind of changed the landscape in college football, we thought at least in the near term. But it’s now gone on for the better part of a decade and a half. So it was a really special night and I think it was a statement to all of college football that there was a new sheriff in town. And to be a part of that and knowing how much we put into that game, it was just incredibly, incredibly satisfying to finish the way that we did.”