There has been a clear shift in Alabama’s opening day matchups of late that has been an emphasis from head coach Nick Saban and athletics director Greg Byrne.
In years past the Crimson Tide has scheduled several big-time matchups between schools at neutral sites such as Atlanta or Dallas. But now at an increased rate, Alabama will be conducting home-and-home series as it looks to complete one this weekend against Texas.
Saban explained the reasoning behind the scheduling adjustment when speaking with the media on Monday.
“I think that one of the reasons that we did neutral-site games, from a scheduling standpoint, it was a way to get a quality opponent on the schedule early on,” Saban said,” Which I thought had a lot of benefit in terms of your team developing in the offseason, looking forward to that game.
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“Probably the Clemson game that we had the second year we were here probably did as much to sort of ignite the program in a way. But then after you do that for a while and you start having success, and fans are going to playoff games and bowl games and different things, they don’t have the same significance.
“Then to have more quality home games for fans to see becomes a little bit more I think important. I think that’s kind of in a nutshell is sort of why we transitioned back to this. Not to say that if we had an opportunity to play a game somewhere in the future we would, but I think that changes also with the conference realignment, and what can happen in the future. So there’s a lot of factors that go into that.”
Through 2030 Alabama will be playing home-and-home series against USF, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Ohio State, Oklahoma State, Georgia Tech, Notre Dame, Arizona, Minnesota, Boston College and Virginia Tech.
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Patrick Dowd is a Reporter for Touchdown Alabama Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter, via Pat_Dowd77
