LSU and Alabama is always a big game.

So this will be exactly the kind of night that lured Brian Kelly away from a perfectly good job at Notre Dame to take over the LSU program.

“It’s not pressure,” Kelly said. “It’s a privilege to play in games like this.”

But it wasn’t supposed to be this big this year.

“This game has always got significant implications,” Alabama head coach Nick Saban said. “They’re always ranked, we’re always ranked. It’s kind of a rivalry game that’s always a really important matchup.”

Maybe it’s not one of the assorted “Games of the Century” the Tigers and Tide have staged over the years. And the showdown between Tennessee and Georgia is taking center stage even within the Southeastern Conference.

But here the two schools are again, with control of the SEC West on the line for tonight’s kickoff in Tiger Stadium.

Alabama (7-1, 4-1 SEC), of course, has designs on reaching the College Football Playoff.

That’s probably out of LSU’s reach, but no one really expected the Tigers (6-2, 4-1) to get within sniffing distance of the SEC Championship game this soon after Kelly took over a program that had gone 11-12 since winning the 2019 national championship.

“LSU, right now, is probably playing as well as anybody in the country,” Saban said. “Brian Kelly has done an outstanding job there bringing his team along, improving each week.

“They’ve gotten to the point where — and all of his teams have been this way — they don’t beat themselves. You’ve got to execute and beat them.”

LSU, which was picked fifth in the SEC West in preseason, will have conference games remaining at Arkansas and Texas A&M after tonight.

But Kelly isn’t thinking about that.

“All of the noise and all of the other things are just distractions,” Kelly said. “This is about preparation. This is about focusing on our process. It’s about playing our best and adding another layer to what’s we’re doing.”

It’s been quite a turnaround for an LSU team that opened the Kelly Era with a sloppy, disjointed 24-23 loss to Florida State and later flopped at home when Tennessee whipped the Tigers 40-13.

But LSU has won three straight since, including a 45-20 rout of then-No. 7 Ole Miss.

“They’ve gotten to the point where — and all of his teams have been this way — they don’t beat themselves,” Saban said. “You’ve got to execute and beat them.”

It’s no surprise that Alabama, a 13½-point favorite, is in the mix for the playoffs. But the Tide, ranked No. 6 in the season’s first CFP rankings, does seem slightly more vulnerable this season than in most years past.

The Tide lost at the buzzer at Tennessee and had close calls on the road at Texas and at home against otherwise struggling Texas A&M.

Kelly played the Tide twice while at Notre Dame, blowouts in both the old Bowl Championship Series title game and the semifinals of the CFP.

His opinion of Alabama hasn’t changed.

“This is a well-coached football team with elite talent that knows how to win at this level, consistently year in and year out,” he said.