The haunting that Nick Saban swears inhabits Jordan-Hare Stadium didn’t manage to ruin Alabama football’s season on Saturday. The Crimson Tide took down Auburn 27-20, notching its 10th win of the 2025 season and finishing the regular season 10-2, 7-1 in SEC play.

The win was enough to clinch a trip to Atlanta. Alabama will play in the SEC championship game next Saturday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

The Crimson Tide will face a familiar foe in the game. Kirby Smart’s Georgia team punched its ticket on Friday.

The Bulldogs locked in their spot due to Texas A&M faltering against Texas. The Aggies would have clinched their trip to Atlanta with a win but missed out due to tiebreakers after a loss in Austin.

After Georgia beat Georgia Tech on Friday, Smart was asked whether it was actually good for the Bulldogs to play in the SEC championship before the playoff, due to injury risk.

“If you worry about injury risk, we won’t practice next week,” Smart said. “So you live your life scared of injuries, you know what you get? A very scared team. There’s also an opportunity to win an SEC championship. Does that matter? Does anybody care about that anymore?

“I mean, I grew up thinking that was the greatest game in the world and just different from everybody else. Yeah, we lost guys today to injury, we’re going to lose guys in practice to injury, but that’s next man up. Like, that’s what’s wrong with this whole thing now. It’s like, ‘well, what if you get hurt? What if you do this? What if you do that?’ I mean, it’s football. It’s all part of it.”

Alabama beat Georgia in Athens earlier this season. The victory kicked off a stretch of ranked wins that propelled UA into CFP contention following a Week 1 loss to Florida State.

The two schools have no shortage of SEC championship game history. Alabama and Georgia have met in the game four times, with the Crimson Tide holding a 4-0 record.

The most recent occasion came in 2023. The Crimson Tide won that game 27-24, in the final SEC championship game played between the winners of the league’s east and west divisions before Texas and Oklahoma joined the conference for the 2024 season.

The 2023 SEC championship game was Nick Saban’s final win as Alabama’s head coach. The 2025 edition will be Kalen DeBoer’s first trip to a conference championship game since he and Washington won the Pac-12’s in 2023, on the way to a national championship appearance.

The SEC championship game could have major implications for Alabama’s CFP hopes. If the Crimson Tide wins, it will obviously be in, but with a three-loss Texas vying for a spot along with other schools, a loss, especially in a blowout, could mean UA playing in a meaningless bowl game for the second year in a row.

The SEC championship game will kick off at 3 p.m. CT next Saturday in Atlanta. The game will be aired on ABC.