How the first SEC championship game changed college football

Roy Kramer and other Southeastern Conference officials walked through Legion Field down toward the lower level. It was late in the fourth quarter of the 1992 SEC championship, and they needed to reach the officiating crew in case the game ended in a tie.

Alabama and Florida were knotted, 21-21, so they had to discuss what to do in case the score held. Angst hung in the cold, rainy air. The inaugural championship game had been widely questioned, and now the three-loss Gators had a chance to upend the undefeated Crimson Tide.

Just then, Alabama cornerback Antonio Langham returned an interception for a touchdown.

“We didn't see the play,” said Mark Womack, Kramer’s right-hand man and now the SEC executive associate commissioner, “but certainly heard it.”

Langham’s interception prevented Florida from dashing Alabama’s national championship hopes. The Crimson Tide went on to beat Miami 34-13 in the Sugar Bowl for their first title since the Bear Bryant days — but that was not the lasting significance.

Thirty-one years later, the initially controversial SEC championship game has become one of the most important matchups of the season. The winner has gone on to capture 15 national championships, and it paved the way for other leagues to implement their own title games.

“The SEC being the first to do that, I think, led to a change in how college football was scheduled and played in the conferences,” Womack said, “because everybody then was trying to get to a conference championship game, which created the expansion to get the numbers to be able to do that.”

Next year, the way teams reach the SEC championship will change as the conference moves to a single division. The two teams with the highest winning percentages will go to the title game. The winner receives an automatic bid in the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff, which comes with a first-round bye that maintains the significance of conference championships.

Kramer, the SEC commissioner at the time, directed the implementation of an SEC title game as the league expanded to 12 teams in 1992. Conferences crowned champions based on regular-season winning percentage, occasionally resulting in split titles. The additions of Arkansas and South Carolina allowed the SEC to create two divisions, which made a championship game possible under NCAA bylaws.

“I don't think it was any great secret,” Kramer said. “The rule had been there for years to provide for that opportunity if a conference had more than 10 members. It was put in, obviously in the beginning I think, primarily for the Division II or III schools, where there were more conferences.”

The idea did not initially receive full support. Multiple SEC coaches thought the extra game would prevent their teams from competing for national championships.

“The championship game minimized the regular season to that degree for all the teams,” former Auburn athletic director and sports information director David Housel said. “If you had 14 teams in the conference, every game was important. But all of a sudden, now, you had to win the championship by winning one game. Of course the fallacy with that argument is you had to be pretty good to get to the championship game.”

In 1992, Alabama rolled through the regular season with a defense that allowed eight points per game. Florida was in the early stages of building a powerhouse under coach Steve Spurrier and his Fun ‘n’ Gun offense.

“We were undefeated and hadn't won anything,” former Alabama coach Gene Stallings said. “Hadn't won a championship. Hadn't won the SEC. Hadn't won anything; we just won lots of games. So that was an important game — not only for Alabama, but for all of college football.”

The Gators were clear underdogs, but they kept the score close deep into the fourth quarter and regained possession with a chance to take the lead.

Then Langham stepped in front of a curl route on the outside. He intercepted a pass thrown by Florida quarterback Shane Matthews and scored.

“We all know corners are riverboat gamblers,” Langham said. “Either we going to guess right, and we’re going to look good in front of millions of people. Or we going to guess wrong, and we're going to look bad in front of millions of people.”

Alabama’s win and subsequent national title eased fears, helping the SEC championship game continue. Four years later, the Big 12 added a conference championship game. The ACC started one in 2005. The Pac-12 and Big Ten followed suit when they expanded in 2011.

As the championship games grew and Kramer spearheaded the BCS system, postseason decisions shifted away from the bowls, leading eventually to the CFP.

“With the way it turned out with Alabama — it could have been any team — but going to win the national championship kind of put to rest some of the fears that other leagues may have had,” Womack said. “I think that's what set the trend for other conferences to go about trying to create what the SEC had.”

In 2009, Langham was named Alabama’s “SEC Legend” and attended a banquet the night before the championship game. As he gathered his belongings afterward, he heard someone call his name.

An older man walked toward him with his arms extended for a hug. Langham didn’t recognize the man at first. He stepped out of the way, thinking this person wanted to greet someone behind him.

It was Kramer, looking for the guy who unknowingly shaped the future of college football to tell him he bailed him out years before.

“ ‘You are my hero,’ ” Langham recalled Kramer saying. “ ‘You will always be my hero.’ ”