LSU and Alabama face off this weekend in one of the biggest regular-season college football games in recent memory. LSU comes into the game as the Associated Press No. 1 ranked team, while Alabama carries the No. 2 ranking. Due to the College Football Playoff and prior to it, the BCS, these games happen almost yearly, but seeing a No. 1 vs. a No. 2 in the regular season is rare.
In fact, this will be just the 15th time in 50 years that the top two AP-ranked teams have played each other in the regular season, the last time being in 2011 when we had nearly the same scenario, as No. 1 LSU went into No. 2 Alabama and beat the Tide in a defensive showdown. That game, like most matchups of the top two teams, was close and came down to the final moments.
The top two ranked teams have met six times since that game, but all were either in the BCS championship game or the College Football Playoff championship game. (Five of those games involved Alabama.) To have it happen in the regular season is much more infrequent now than it was during the World War II era and the 1960s.
So let’s look back at the last 14 times the AP top two faced off in the regular season.
