IN TWELVE YEARS as the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, Roy F. Kramer forever altered the course of collegiate football history not once, but twice.
His second creation, the Bowl Championship Series, is an institution millions detest and protest every year with stellar frequency. However, his first innovation, the SEC Championship Game, is one that has over time grown to be almost universally accepted and heralded.
This isn't about the BCS, but rather about the SECCG, as the game has come to be abbreviated by. The 19th edition will be played tomorrow, but to properly understand the significance of the matchup between the Auburn University Tigers and the University of South Carolina Gamecocks, it is best to start at the beginning.
Kramer took office in 1990, and within seven months of becoming commissioner, he forever changed the league, expanding it from 10 to 12 members with the additions of Arkansas and South Carolina.
The move to a dozen teams seems at first glance like simple arithmetic to get bigger, but it wasn't. By getting his conference to 12 members, Kramer was able to divide the league into two divisions and, utilizing a then-little known loophole in the NCAA bylaws, create a conference championship game – in effect, the SEC's own bowl game, from which it can take every single penny of revenue and put it in its own pocket.
The passion of the South suddenly found itself the most powerful and wealthy conference in all the land. The early years of the title game were dominated by the traditional power of the SEC, Alabama and Florida, a flashy, high-flying offensive juggernaut helmed by a brash coach named Steve Spurrier.
But, as the years passed, teams such as Tennessee, Auburn, Mississippi State, LSU, Georgia and even Arkansas, one-half of the equation to create the game, all got in on the act and won division titles.
South Carolina, however, was not as fortunate. Despite being one of the reasons the game even existed in the first place, a trip to first Birmingham, Ala., and later Atlanta to compete for the league title proved to be an unreachable star every fall, as USC and its fans began to wonder if it would ever reach the league's promised land.
But, things change over time. After winning the 2002 Orange Bowl with UF, Spurrier decided he wanted to attempt to win at the next level, and left Gainesville for Landover, Md., and the National Football League's Washington Redskins, never expecting to return to the title game as a coach.
"I thought I'd coach in the NFL five or six years and hang it up," Spurrier said. "But sometimes your plans as a coach don't always follow through the way maybe you imagine."
Spurrier learned in D.C. that winning the NFC East was not quite as easy as winning the SEC East, and he left the NFL after two seasons. After taking a year-long sabbatical, he decided he wanted to coach at the collegiate level again, and he wanted a challenge. He wanted to go to a place where something had never been done before and he wanted to accomplish whatever that was.
"I just told my wife, ‘Let's go to South Carolina and see if we can do some things that have never been done before,'" Spurrier said.
He chose South Carolina. He chose striving to win the SEC title.
"I truly believe winning the SEC is an achievable goal for the University of South Carolina. I really do," he said at his introductory press conference. "Our ultimate goal is that we can finish atop in the SEC, that we can someday win the game in the Georgia Dome."
Six seasons; five winning records; four bowl game appearances; three wins over Tennessee and Clemson; two wins over Florida and Georgia; two losses to Vanderbilt; one loss to an unranked UConn squad, which has played in the FBS for 10 years; one win over then-No. 1 Alabama, the eighth-winningest program in history; and one dance with Marcus Lattimore's mother later, the Gamecocks are finally going to play in the Georgia Dome.
At long last, USC is one win away from being able to call itself the SEC champion.
"I think it means a lot to [Spurrier]. I think it means even more to him in an aspect of this whole football program. And I think it means a lot to our players and a lot to our fans," kicker Spencer Lanning said. "I think everybody is sort of anxious to see how we prepare and what we can do out there on Saturday at 4 p.m."
When Spurrier took the USC job in 2004, many said he would regret taking the job, as it would be nearly impossible to win an SEC title at a school that, at that point, had only finished at .500 or better in SEC play four times and had only one conference championship in its history – the 1969 ACC regular season crown.
Spurrier himself said recently those opinions were "probably a fair assessment" of the situation, but beyond the conventional wisdom for him laid signs of hope.
"That was really one of the reasons I was excited about the opportunity to coach here, is that they had not achieved very much at all, but the opportunity to do it is here," Spurrier said. "We've got a big stadium. Seats about 80-something thousand and the fans buy all the tickets. We usually have sell-outs. And tremendous fan support. The university support.
"It's all here."
And now, here the Gamecocks are, finally on the surface of the star it appeared they'd never even come close to arriving to.
"We're preparing hard for this game," linebacker Josh Dickerson said. "We're going to put everything into it. We're definitely going to try to come out with a win this week."
A major reason why USC is even here to begin with is the success it has had against those aforementioned titans of the SEC. In one season, the Gamecocks have defeated Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Florida – the first time in school history it has done so.
All were "big stage" games, as Spurrier calls them, and since all ended in victory, USC now finds itself playing on the biggest stage of big stages.
"We've already talked briefly about playing on the big stage of college football. And our guys get a twinkle in their eye when I say that," Spurrier said. "Now we're going to the biggest stage in the South, I think, for college football, the SEC Championship Game."
USC is also here because it has had Lattimore in the backfield this season. The Duncan native, whose mother Spurrier famously danced with while recruiting the Byrnes High star, has completely transformed the USC offense.
"You look at him, he's not extremely big, fast or strong. But then you watch him play against this great competition, and you just realize that he's just a grown man," Lanning said. "He pretty much controls his own destiny. He's probably going to be as good as he wants to be."
When Lattimore announced his decision earlier this year in a church sanctuary in Spartanburg, "Sandstorm" blasting through the vestibule, it was Auburn, the other half of his final two, which was turned down.
"It's crazy. I think about it all the time, how it was down to Auburn and South Carolina," Lattimore said. "But I knew this was the right place for me. No doubt in my mind. I'm supposed to be here right now."
Here he is, and here are the Gamecocks.
"We know what's at hand and that it's never been done around here," Lattimore said. "History has failed this year. We've beaten the top teams in the East and have chance to make history again Saturday."
Auburn, which at 12-0 is one win away from punching its ticket to the BCS National Championship game, wants its seventh SEC title simply as a means to the end of getting to Glendale, Ariz., on Jan. 10. The Gamecocks, still without a league crown, have nothing else to play for than that milestone first – one they want to reach, but don't want to dwell on.
"We all know the significance. We all know it hasn't happened before, but that won't help us win the game talking about that," Spurrier said. "We're trying to talk about how we need to play it to give ourselves the best chance to be successful in the game.
"Wishing it's going to happen is not going to help us beat these guys. We have to play our game, play our brand of ball, get our best players involved and give our team the best chance to be successful and play the entire night."
It is such a monumental achievement for the Gamecocks to be in position to win the SEC title; it's almost hard to articulate the significance.
But Alshon Jeffery, the star wide receiver who now so famously predicted this rematch on this stage some 68 days ago outside the visiting locker room at Auburn, managed to sum it all up in some nine simple words:
"This game right here, is what you live for."
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