Once more, with feeling

Vols-Tigers will definitely look different this time around

ATLANTA -- We sure love our rematches, don't we?

From Ali-Frazier to Lakers-Celtics to Bud Bowl II (and III, IV and V), we've always had a thing for making competitors throw out the first result and do it for us again.

So as Tennessee and LSU prepare to meet for a second time this season Saturday for the SEC championship -- the Vols won the first, now-moot battle 26-18 -- you can't help but laugh at the irony when Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer points out, "In this league, you have to win it twice."

In fact, if the Tigers knock off the Vols on Saturday, Tennessee (10-1, 7-1 SEC) will still finish with better league and overall records than LSU (8-3, 5-3 SEC). But Nick Saban's boys will get the rings, because, in today's playoff-hungry environment, if two teams play more than once, only the most recent outcome matters.

With only 11, maybe 12 games to play in a season and over 100 possible Division I-A opponents, rematches have been relatively rare in college football historically. Tennessee, for one, will be playing a team twice in one season Saturday for the first time since 1944.

But lately, there have been a growing number of exceptions.

Like 1996, when Florida State played Florida twice in a row to decide the national championship. It didn't matter that the Seminoles beat the Gators to finish their regular season undefeated. Faced with the task of doing it again six weeks later in order to win the national championship, Florida routed the 'Noles and took home the prize.

Video Click the image to launch the clip LSU and Tennessee try to focus on one game, not what's at stake.Start Casey Clausen has smoothly adjusted into a very demanding role. Video Plus Visit Video Plus for all the latest video and audio.

And you saw it happen again just last week in the Big 12 championship, when Colorado beat Texas 39-37 after losing to 41-7 to the Longhorns during the season.

All three cases beg the same question: How can two football teams play each other twice -- both, presumably, with the same coaches and personnel -- and produce two such drastically different outcomes?

"A lot of people ask, 'You're playing the same team twice -- is that weird?'" said Saban. "Not really for me, because I'm used to being in pro football, where you play the teams in your division twice. It does seem a little unusual in college, but I don't think you can draw many comparisons from the first game to the second game."

That's because in college football, teams often undergo a complete makeover during the course of an 11-game season.

When these schools last met Sept. 29, Tennessee was a team struggling to find itself offensively and coping with injuries to star defender John Henderson and top receiver Donte Stallworth. It was only one week away from suffering what seemed then to be a disastrous home loss to Georgia.

Now it is a team playing with the confidence that comes from winning seven consecutive games and getting a huge monkey off its back by winning at Florida's Swamp.

"We were riding Travis Stephens pretty hard at that time," said Fulmer. "[Quarterback] Casey [Clausen] was not far enough along yet, Donte was injured, [receiver] Kelley Washington was still learning the game. We've grown constantly since that time."

LSU was still early in Saban's second season at that time and, despite winning nine games and beating Tennessee at home in his first, still was not widely considered an elite SEC team. After losing to the Vols, getting pounded by Florida and falling to Ole Miss at home, reaching the title game once again seemed like a longshot.

But after winning four straight to close the season and capturing the West for the first time in the game's nine-year history, the Tigers' outlook is considerably different.

"Mentally, we're a better team. We're a more confident team right now," said Saban. "Offensively, we're a much more consistent team than we were earlier in the season. ... Defensively, we're improved in terms of our ability to make big plays when we need to make them."

All of which means Saturday's game will probably bear almost no resemblance to the first one.

You can bet the bank that Washington will not catch 11 balls for 256 yards, and that LaBrandon Toefield will get more than the eight carries for 20 yards he was limited to by injury.

But you can also bet Tigers QB Rohan Davey will be under a lot more pressure from Henderson, that he probably won't be able to torch the Vols for 356 passing yards, and that Stallworth, who didn't play in the first game, will play a significant role for Tennessee.

"You completely redo it," Fulmer said when asked about his game plan from the first one. "You go back and look at film, you critique it, you get what you can from it. But in this game, it's not really relevant."

All eyes on Atlanta

While Fulmer and Saban seem genuinely concerned only about the game at hand, both know the nation is watching because of its Rose Bowl implications. Colorado coach Gary Barnett said this week his team will cheer on the Tigers Saturday night, while the secretaries in Nebraska's football office donned purple and gold earlier this week.

"I betcha there are a lot of people in the BCS praying we don't [win], because it will make things a little uncomfortable in terms of which team they pick and who the next team would be," said Saban. "At least we have two people who are pulling for us."

Fulmer says his team has paid little attention the past few weeks to the rash of Top 10 upsets (Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas) that enabled Tennessee to jump back into Rose Bowl contention.

"Three weeks ago against Kentucky, we were just glad to get out of there [with a 38-35 win]. We were not thinking too much about the national championship, we were thinking about survival. ... It's not really been a case where you're saying, 'geez, I hope Texas loses,' just taking care of your own knitting and the rest will work itself out."

Despite the mess that will ensue if Tennessee loses -- with Nebraska, Colorado and Oregon all able to make cases they should be No. 2 -- Saban says he remains opposed to a playoff, citing the added strain on the players. He'd rather see a return to traditional bowl pairings, with the top two teams after the bowls playing a "Super Bowl of sorts."

"I think it would be difficult for players to play three, four, five more games at this point. This has been a long season for us," he said. "Our players have finals next week. There are other things for them to do, they're not professional football players."

Paying off in the short run

Many eyebrows were raised two years ago when LSU wooed Saban with a seven-figure contract despite having had just one noticeably successful season in five years at Michigan State. But by getting the Tigers, 3-8 the year before he arrived, into the SEC championship in just his second year, he's well ahead of any timetable one could have foreseen upon his arrival.

"I didn't think when I first got the job we'd be able to be successful without rebuilding," said the coach, now 16-7 at LSU. "But when I got to know the players, got familiar with what we had, I thought we could piece together a pretty good team."

Of course, just reaching Atlanta won't be enough for long for devout Tiger fans, who haven't tasted a conference title since 1988. With young stars like Michael Clayton, Marcus Spears and Ben Wilkerson on board, a rise to national prominence is fully expected. And winning Saturday's game would be a step in that direction.

"I think it would obviously give LSU -- our program, the institution -- a lot of credibility on the national scene. ... I think to do that, you have to beat really good teams, and I think Tennessee is a really good team."

Stewart Mandel covers college football for CNNSI.com. The "College Football Beat" appears each Thursday during the season.

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