A few questions remain without answers in recent Alabama history.

What if Tim Tebow committed to Mike Shula instead of Florida?

What if that final second ticked off the fourth-quarter clock of the 2013 Iron Bowl?

Colt McCoy?

Try this one: What if Chris Conley didn't catch that tipped pass in the 2012 SEC Championship?

Just feet from the site of Monday's College Football Playoff championship between Alabama and Georgia, another butterfly-effect moment in their shared history sits somewhere in the rubble of the Georgia Dome.

This goes back to Dec. 2, 2012 in what turned out to be the last truly competitive SEC Championship Game. Alabama entered No. 2, followed closely by Georgia. Both had losses, but this was clearly a BCS national semifinal game for the right to play Notre Dame in Miami.

What happened that afternoon in Atlanta was one of the more entertaining games of the Nick Saban era. They traded leads in the first half before a blocked field goal in the third quarter put Georgia up 21-10.

Alabama's third national title in four years appeared in trouble with Mark Richt's Bulldogs riding momentum and feeling the home-state love. His offense put together two impressive touchdown marches of 87 yards and 75 yards before that.

The only team who scored like this on Kirby Smart's Alabama defense was Texas A&M and Johnny Manziel.

Alabama responded with two straight touchdowns to take a 25-21 lead. Then Todd Gurley again put Georgia up 28-25 with 12:54 left. Amari Cooper's 45-yard touchdown catch from AJ McCarron made it a four-point game with 3:15 left.

The two traded punts, giving Georgia the ball with 1:02 left and 85 yards separating itself from its first SEC championship since 2005. The Bulldogs took a 32-point beating from LSU on that same turf in the previous league title game.

Richt had the program trending upward after a miserable 10-6 loss to UCF in the 2010 Liberty Bowl left them with a losing 6-7 record. Lingering unrest with Richt's tenure would certainly end with an SEC championship over the league's revived bully in Tuscaloosa. This was his moment.

And the drive was promising.

Three straight big passes went for 15, 23 and 26 yards respectively. Aaron Murray picked apart a Jeremy Pruitt-coached Alabama secondary. Suddenly, he had Georgia eight yards from the end zone with 15 seconds on the rolling clock.

Murray took the shot gun snap and quickly threw it as Alabama linebacker C.J. Mosley jumped. No sack, but he got a piece of the back-shoulder throw intended for Malcolm Mitchell. Conley just happened to be where the fluttering pass was landing. Instincts said catch it. He hit the turf in bounds, five yards short of a touchdown. No timeouts and the final seconds ticked away.

Richt looked as if the soul was sucked from his form.

Alabama 32, Georgia 28.

Smart sprinted onto the field to mob Mosley. The 36-year old defensive coordinator jumped around like the happiest kid on the playground.

"That was a football game," said Smart, who a few days later would interview for the head coaching job at Auburn. "I knew it would be. I was sick to my stomach all week."

And that's as close as Richt got to turning that fateful corner with Georgia.

Alabama's complete 42-14 devastation of No. 1 Notre Dame couldn't have made things easier considering Georgia likely would have done something similar against a completely overmatched Irish.

The Bulldogs consolation was a 42-21 beating of Nebraska in the Capital One Bowl.

Things regressed from there. Defensive coordinator Todd Grantham resigned after an 8-5 season in 2013. In came Pruitt, fresh off a national championship in the same role at Florida State.

Georgia wasn't bad. It just wasn't five-yards-from-a-national-title good. A 10-3 season in 2014 was repeated in 2015.

The heat was just too hot by then. Richt was out after 15 seasons at Georgia, a 145-51 record, two SEC titles and three championship appearances. At the same time, Smart's head coaching stock was back up after some difficult defensive seasons adjusting to the new world of offenses in 2013 and 2014.

It was clear the Georgia alum was headed home. The school announced it a day after Smart stayed in Atlanta instead of driving home with the team after the 2015 SEC Championship win over Florida.

It took him just two years to conquer the SEC East, then end the division's eight-year championship game draught with a win over Auburn in December. Now, a double-overtime Rose Bowl win over Oklahoma later, Smart is standing on the edge of something remarkable.

Meanwhile, Richt's alma mater rejuvenation is also ahead of schedule even if Miami faded late after climbing as high as No. 2 this season.

Pruitt wasn't retained on the Georgia staff when Smart took over, so he took his old gig at Alabama. Now he's about to coach his final game in crimson before taking over Tennessee's program in the same postseason balancing act Smart managed in 2015.

He saw Alabama's defense through that national championship win over Clemson, though defense wasn't the catalyst of that 45-40 win over the Tigers.

That brings everyone to Monday night.

The Georgia Dome is gone after an almost-perfect implosion in November. Instead, Smart and Georgia will reunite with Alabama and Saban in the new stadium. He'll see the likes of Minkah Fitzpatrick and Rashaan Evans -- five-star recruits he brought to Alabama in what seemed like a good idea at the time.

It's hard not to think about Chris Conley, Aaron Murray, C.J. Mosley and the befuddled Richt who saw fortunes change in an instant that December afternoon in 2012. Of course, Georgia wasn't assured of a victory if that pass wasn't tipped.

But one can only imagine the alternate universe where Georgia scored, beat Notre Dame and gave Richt that job security.

Where would everybody be sitting Monday night if that what-if wasn't hypothetical?

Michael Casagrande is an Alabama beat writer for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande.