BATON ROUGE — Everyone knew No. 1 LSU (13-0) would play in the national championship game on Jan. 9. No. 2-ranked Alabama (11-1), whose only loss came at the hands of the Tigers one month ago, found out Sunday night that they will meet the Tigers in New Orleans.
With that, the Southeastern Conference is guaranteed its sixth-straight national champion. LSU won championships in 1958, 2003 and 2007 — the most recent pair came in the Louisiana Superdome.
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LSU defeated the Crimson Tide on Nov. 5, 9-6 in overtime (Watch: Highlights | Condensed | Replay), at Bryant-Denny Stadium.
Alabama beat out Oklahoma State by .0086 points in the final standings (below).
Bowl Championship Series Standings
RK, TEAM, BCS AVG, PVS, COMP. AVG , COMP. %
1, LSU, 1.000, 1, 1, 1.000
2, Alabama, .9419, 2, 3, .930
3, Oklahoma State, .9333, 3, 2, .950
4, Stanford, .8476, 4, 5, .800
5, Oregon, .7901, 9, 8, .710
6, Arkansas, .7687, 8, 5, .800
7, Boise State, .7408, 7, 9, .680
8, Kansas State, .6827, 11, 4, .850
9, South Carolina, .6553, 12, 10, .670
10, Wisconsin, .6374, 15, 14, .460
11, Virginia Tech, .5190, 5, 13, .470
12, Baylor, .4977, 17, 11, .660
13, Michigan, .4794, 16, 15, .400
14, Oklahoma, .4603, 10, 7, .760
15, Clemson, .4218, 20, 16, .350
16, Georgia, .4119, 14, 12, .490
17, Michigan State, .3883, 13, 21, .170
18, TCU, .3869, 18, 17, .300
19, Houston, .3504, 6, 18, .290
20, Nebraska, .2606, 19, 19, .260
21, Southern Miss, .1918, 24, 24, .080
22, Penn State, .1305, 21, 23, .130
23, West Virginia, .1233, 23, 25, .000
24, Texas, .0876, 22, 19, .260
25, Auburn, .0584, NR, 21, .170
Les Miles Post BCS Announcemant – Dec. 4, 2011
On the process of playing in the Championship Game…
“The good news is that we’ve been in this game before, understand what it means to play game with a month out and how to divide the time. We’re prepared. The first place we will start is the first game where we played them. It might be rendered as diferent. I think there will be some similarities and some contrasting styles.”
On what qualifies both teams…
“The victories over quality opponents and the system that we are in has identified the strength of the ratings. When you play an Oregon first, West Virginia, all the road games that you play and the Western Division’s highly ranked teams, it is easy to come up with both Alabama and LSU as one and two.”
On the first Alabama game…
“I thought they did a lot of things well. They threw the ball well. They obviously played very quality defense and special teams, minus a couple of kicks.”
On who he voted for in the Coaches’ Poll…
“I had to vote for Alabama because I felt that was the honest vote. I would have loved to have casted a vote on my ballot for Oklahoma State as well.”
On every freshman since 2000 playing for a championship
“I would have to argue that there were other years where we were in position to play for other championships. If you look at last year, 17-17 with 7:51 to go against Auburn, I felt that was a time right there if we put together a drive that last year’s games would have ended the same way. We’re in position where our program will play for conference honors, Western Division honors and national honors year in and year out. We will do it with guys that want to come in and play as freshman, want to play young, play big and who are talented young men.”
On going against Nick Saban…
“It makes no difference to me who the opponent is or who the coach is for that matter. I have great respect for Coach Saban. I certainly recognize the quality team that he has prepared and recruited.”
Player Interviews – BCS Championship Announcement
FS Eric Reid
On playing Alabama in the BCS Championship Game …
“We knew there was a good chance that we would be playing Alabama again. They are, in my mind, the No. 2 team in the country, so it wasn’t a surprise at all. Now that we know it’s for sure, we can start preparing.”
“I’ve never been a champion at any level of football, so this is very exciting for me as well as our team. The game that we played a couple of weeks ago doesn’t matter anymore. This is a new game and we have to prepare like any other one. If we lose this one, nobody will remember the one that we won. We just have to keep this game in our focus.”
“It was a tough game the first time, with the way we ended up winning. I know that Alabama is going to be extremely motivated to get their ‘revenge,’ if you want to use that word. We just have to come out with the mentality that they will be hyped up and we have to match their intensity.”
“Being that we’ve played each other already, they know us, and we know them. We know each others weapons, so we just have to prepare that much more and make sure we can be as mistake free as possible.”
“I think Alabama is identical to us. They have an extremely tough running game and they can beat you deep if you get caught in play action. Like I keep saying, you have to stay focused. As a safety, you can’t get caught in the play action. You have to stay deep. They’re good at running the ball. They get pushed on the line of scrimmage and they test your linebackers and the secondary to see if they can tackle the running backs. They’ve got two good ones and three or four from the film we’ve watched. We have to go in there mentally focused.”
On playing Alabama in the BCS Championship …
“This is what the world wants to see. This is a heavy-weight fight. This will be a big game, the Super Bowl of college football. It’s going to be great playing against the second-best team in the country. Both teams will be able to go out there and show the world how two great defenses play and see a lot of hard hits out there on the field.”
“We’re just glad that we’re in the game. We had an idea in the back of our mind that we would be playing Alabama because of the strength of their schedule and other things. It shows the dominance and strength of the SEC. Alabama is a very physical team. Coach Saban is not going to quit, and neither is Coach Miles. I think that’s why people what to see a rematch between our teams.”
“(Coach Saban) has seen our defense already, and he’ll be more prepared. He’ll learn from our mistakes just like we’ll learn from our mistakes. We need to be ready to play. We need to be focused. We need to step up to the challenge.”