Haven’t they met somewhere before?

Ohio State and Florida resume their all-sports championship series tonight when their basketball teams meet for the national championship at the Georgia Dome.

What next, baseball? Water polo? Arm wrestling?

Nobody told these programs they had to stop meeting this way -- so they keep doing it.

The schools played for the national title in football Jan. 8, in Arizona, and it was all going the Buckeyes’ way when Ted Ginn Jr. returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown.

Florida then answered with a 21-0 run en route to a 41-14 coronation.

Tonight’s game has a definite football feel. Ohio State has a starting center, Greg Oden, who tips the scales at 270 pounds, and Florida’s 6-foot-10 Al Horford might make a mean tight end if he wasn’t a mean power forward.

Saturday, Florida fans started the chant, “just like football,” and there’s a decent shot Florida will hold Ohio State basketball to fewer points than it gave up to the football Buckeyes in total yards: 82.

“Ohio State is a football school,” senior forward Ivan Harris said, “but we’re trying to get on the map.”

The game will be played under a football roof, the same home-sweet-dome where Florida has clinched five Southeastern Conference football titles.

Both football coaches, Urban Meyer of Florida and Ohio State’s Jim Tressel (not wearing a sweater vest), attended Saturday’s national semifinal games and are scheduled to return tonight to lead cheers.

The players from both sports pull for each other.

“I will remember [Gators quarterback] Chris Leak being booed in our stadium and then winning the championship and shutting everybody up,” Florida center Joakim Noah said Sunday. “ ... These are all moments that I’ll always remember.”

Unlike football, in which Florida needed help from the Bowl Championship Series points system to edge out Michigan for the No. 2 spot, both the basketball schools got here without politicking.

Ohio State (35-3) entered the tournament as the nation’s top-ranked team. The Buckeyes are trying to win their first title since their last, and only, championship, in 1960. They lost title games in 1939, 1961 and 1962.

Florida (34-5) returned to the tournament as the defending champion and now seeks to become the first team to win titles in consecutive seasons since Duke in 1991-92.

Not that the players like to be reminded.

“I wish I had a nickel for every time somebody asked me that,” Gators forward Corey Brewer said. “I’d have a lot.... It’s a whole different season. We won the national champion last year. Nobody can come take the trophy away from us. We’re just trying to win another one.”

Asked how many times he had been asked the question, Horford quipped, “Eighty six thousand, three hundred and forty four.”

Many thought the Gators might be beset by fat-cat syndrome, yet the players held together to win five tournament games, the last a thrashing of UCLA on Saturday.

The Gators returned all five starters from last year’s championship team, and it has become abundantly clear they didn’t come back for anything less than another parade ride.

Ohio State has only one big problem in this budding rivalry equation: winning.

In a span from Dec. 23 to Jan. 8, Florida defeated Ohio State in two sports by the combined score of 127-74. The Gators first unloaded on the Buckeyes in basketball, 86-60, at the O’Connell Center, and then did a football number on them 16 days later at the University of Phoenix Stadium.

The Buckeyes basketball team watched the BCS championship game as it prepared for a Big Ten game at Wisconsin.

“Seeing them lose that one hurt,” Ohio State freshman guard Mike Conley Jr. said. “Yes, we want to win for them, as well as for the whole school and all the fans. It says a lot about both athletic programs to be in these games.”

Buckeyes basketball players will say they weren’t at full strength when Florida pounded them in Gainesville.

Oden missed the first seven games of the season recovering from surgery on his right wrist. The Florida game was only the fifth of his young career. He made only two shots, although he did block four, which left an impression on Noah, Florida’s center.

“I remember him blocking my shot and smacking me right in the face right after it,” Noah said. “It didn’t feel too good.”

Feelings were bruised, and feelings linger.

“It was embarrassing,” Ohio State guard Jamar Butler said of the basketball loss.

“But we learned from it. As soon as that game was over, I wanted to play them again.”

Playing for keeps only gets old when you lose.

“It’s a fun place to be,” Noah said of Florida. “Especially when you win championships.”

chris.dufresne@latimes.com