The No.1 team in the country will play host when Alabama welcomes No. 19 LSU to T-Town this Saturday in primetime on CBS. The game is being promoted as yet another chapter in the rivalry between the two SEC West programs, that always seems to have national title implications. That may be true but the guys in Las Vegas don’t seem to think it will be that close or much of a classic.

In the second of a three-part series, The Daily Iberian Managing Editor Raymond Partsch III and Sports Editor Chris Landry break that down, as well as discuss Tiger fans’ hatred for Nick Saban.

Partsch: The point spread being 21 points as on Monday is laughable.

The last time Alabama was this highly favored over LSU was back in 1993 when the Tide were a 24-point favorite over the Curley Hallman-coached Tigers. LSU won that game in T-Town by the way.

Alabama was a dominant force last year but on its way to second-straight national title game they played an inferior LSU team with an interim coach and still only won that game 10-0.

LSU always plays up to face Alabama.

Landry: The point spread does seem so to be a bit large. LSU has faced some really strong Alabama teams in the past decade and has stayed within two scores in all but two of those, the 21-0 BCS championship game win for Alabama in 2012 and a 38-17 Alabama win in 2013. At the same time there have been two overtime games in that span.

Partsch: Look the average margin of victory in the last 13 games in the series and it is 9.6 points, with four of those games having been by four points or less, nine 10 points or less and four of those games went to overtime. During that stretch Alabama has won four national titles, appeared in another title game and has made the College Football Playoff three times.

So to believe that this year’s Alabama team is going to wipe the floor with LSU is a sucker’s bet.

Landry: Since 2000, the series has been a tight one with four blowouts with a 21-point margin or more, two for LSU and two for Alabama, and four overtime games, with two wins for each. Nothing much leads one to believe this year’s game will be any different. Alabama’s seemed a lot stronger than LSU for the past five years, but has one 21-point win, a 14-point win, a 10-point win, a 7-point win and a 4-point wins to show for it. Not too many blowouts there.

Partsch: Can we talk about you and your fellow Tiger fans irrational hatred for Nick Saban? You guys know that he didn’t leave LSU to go to Alabama right? That he left LSU (which he built into a national power and recruited a bunch of players that the next guy won a title with) to take a job in the NFL? That didn’t work out, so he couldn’t come back to LSU so he went and took over a sleeping giant, a school by the way that has given him complete control of everything – another thing that would not have happened at LSU.

Landry: What’s irrational about hating a coach who left your school and shortly thereafter jumped to another school in the same division of your conference and turned them into a juggernaut that consistently challenges for national championships? Would Alabama fans still have the same reverence and love for Bear Bryant if he had left Alabama two years after winning the national championship in 1973 to coach the Falcons, then decided he didn’t like pro football and gone to Auburn, and subsequently led the Tiger War Eagles to six national championships in the next decade before retiring as the greatest college football coach ever? Really? Methinks not.

Partsch: Here’s one more thing that LSU fans should be grateful for. If Saban doesn’t leave for the Dolphins then your beloved New Orleans Saints never win that Super Bowl. He wanted to sign Drew Brees but the medical staff voted against it and Brees ended up in New Orleans, and Saban ended up in T-Town. Yeah, he has been a thorn in your side for the past decade but your state’s professional football team has been better because of it.

Landry: Spurious logic is spurious. Yes, it’s nice that Saban listened to the people on his Dolphins medical staff and decided Drew Brees’ career was done. But while plenty of LSU fans are Saints fans also, you’re talking about two different things. LSU is not the Saints and vice versa. The fact remains Saban now coaches for a division rival (though not much of a rivalry of late), and that makes him “the enemy” for Tigers fans.