For more than six decades, LSU and Alabama have had one thing college football fans could count on: they’d see each other again the next year.
That streak ends with Saturday’s game in Tiger Stadium. Under the SEC’s new scheduling format, this is the last annual meeting between the Tigers and the Crimson Tide. The rivalry isn’t gone, but the certainty that made it part of the sport’s rhythm is.
The conference’s move to a nine-game league schedule, sparked by the additions of Texas and Oklahoma and the expansion to 16 teams, has reshaped the way SEC schools line up against one another. Each program now has three permanent opponents and six rotating ones.
LSU’s protected games are Arkansas, Ole Miss and Texas A&M. Alabama’s are Auburn, Tennessee and Mississippi State.
That setup means LSU and Alabama will not play in 2027. The series returns in Tuscaloosa in 2028, then disappears again in 2029.
It’s an odd tradeoff for a league that has always sold itself on tradition. The SEC has opened the door to more conference matchups, but in the process it has taken the annual guarantee away from one of its most recognizable games.
To be fair, the new format solves a real issue. In the old system, some schools could go years without seeing certain league opponents. Now every team will face every SEC foe at least once every two seasons, with home-and-away games spread across a four-year cycle.
That’s a cleaner setup from a competitive standpoint. It also forces a harder question: is it worth losing the familiar rivalries fans built their calendars around?
LSU and Alabama have played every season since 1964, and the matchup has grown up with both programs. Nick Saban’s exit from LSU and later arrival at Alabama gave the series another layer, turning an already major game into one of the sport’s most watched showdowns.
There were huge moments along the way. The teams met twice in 2011, including Alabama’s win in the BCS National Championship Game. LSU’s 2019 victory in Tuscaloosa became another landmark on the Tigers’ run to a national title.
Not every edition had that kind of weight. Some years the records were uneven, the stakes were lower and the result felt predictable before kickoff. But the annual meeting still mattered because it kept coming back, giving fans a steady supply of memories, rituals and expectations.
This year’s game adds one more wrinkle: Alabama will play in Tiger Stadium in an afternoon kickoff for the first time since 2010.
For LSU fans, the change is bigger than one Saturday. Alabama won’t return to Baton Rouge until at least 2030.
LSU head coach Lane Kiffin called the end of the annual series “sad,” and pointed to the influence of television deals and money on the sport’s traditions.
That’s the tension running through college football right now. The sport keeps chasing bigger TV windows, broader exposure and a schedule built for the expanded College Football Playoff.
None of that is automatically a bad thing. More high-level games should mean better football.
But the most meaningful traditions in this conference weren’t created by efficiency. They were built over years of repetition, regional identity and the kind of shared history that can’t be manufactured overnight.
Texas and Oklahoma may bring fresh national appeal, but they can’t instantly replace decades of annual history. And once a yearly rivalry gets interrupted, getting it back doesn’t necessarily restore what made it feel permanent in the first place.
The SEC had to make tough choices when it picked its protected rivalries. With 16 teams and only three permanent opponents apiece, there was no way to save everything.
Keeping the Iron Bowl, the Egg Bowl and other long-running series makes sense. So does making sure every school gets to visit every SEC stadium more often.
LSU-Alabama shows the limits of trying to do both at once.
Saturday won’t be the end of the rivalry. The teams can still deliver the kind of game that has made this matchup nationally significant. But after 63 straight seasons of seeing each other every year, their relationship is now at the mercy of the conference rotation.
The SEC is creating more chances for its teams to meet.
It’s just not creating more of the thing that made the league special.
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For LSU supporters, the appeal is not just the quality of the games but the ripple effect they could have on the road ahead. Injuries to key players and the way each team handles those absences could matter as much as the matchup itself, especially with so many contenders clustered together and every result carrying extra weight. By Saturday night, the Tigers may have a clearer sense of which teams are separating themselves and which ones are about to make the playoff conversation even messier. [Read more 🡒]