It’s been 12 long years since Alabama football fans have filed into Bryant-Denny Stadium and been treated to a non-conference Power Five opponent. So long that coach Nick Saban’s first signing class – Julio & Co. – dotted the field in a 24-3 drubbing of Penn State in a game broadcast in primetime by ESPN on Sept. 11, 2010.
The atmosphere was downright electric. Not Iron Bowl electric, but juiced like few if any September home games since.
The wait is ending, and none too soon.
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This offseason marks a turn in Crimson Tide football scheduling that represents a farewell to the neutral-site opener. For season-ticket holders who have had a hard time getting to Dallas or Atlanta the last decade, it’s beyond time for the return of home-and-home contracts with top-tier competition. The fan experience for neutral-site games has its appeal but also comes at a price for tickets, travel and lodging that can be on par with a trip to a non-playoff bowl game.
Fortunately, it’s a new day: Alabama will travel to Texas this fall – its first game against Texas since winning the 2009 national championship in the Rose Bowl – and play host to the Longhorns in 2023. That game will be just the second time Alabama has played host to a non-conference Power Five foe in the Saban era, with the aforementioned Penn State game being the first.
It will also serve as a sneak peek at a future conference opponent, as Texas and Oklahoma are set to formally join the SEC in 2025.
The neutral-site opener has certainly been good to Alabama, and it had a purpose to serve, but that purpose had largely outlived its usefulness. As Saban set about building the program in the late 2000s, the recruiting exposure afforded by neutral-site games was significant. Playing in a major metropolitan area like Atlanta or Dallas, particularly on a kickoff-classic weekend with little if any football competition elsewhere on the dial, amounted to a fine TV commercial for the program.
Alabama now recruits on a national level with a sustained success that’s built more on the program’s track record than exposure. The neutral-site squeeze doesn’t render enough juice anymore, but in the win-loss column it tasted pretty good.
The Crimson Tide lost its first neutral-site game under Saban – to Florida State in 2007, in Jacksonville, Fla. Since then it’s gone 11-0 in neutral-site regular-season games with wins over the likes of Clemson, Michigan, USC, Wisconsin and others.
The record by city: 7-0 in Atlanta. 3-0 in Dallas, plus a win in Orlando.
Great results, to be sure, but that’s essentially an entire season of high-profile games played away from home. Alabama fans are past due for a few more at BDS.
And with a little patience, they won’t even have to wait through alternate years to see a marquee non-conference game. UA has lined up two home-and-home series concurrently on some future schedules, beginning in 2026 against West Virginia and FSU. Thanks in to the advent of the College Football Playoff, strength of schedule means more than it ever has, which has freed programs across the country to toughen their schedules.
And not a minute too soon, Alabama is toughening the slate at Bryant-Denny.
Reach Chase Goodbread at cgoodbread@gannett.com. Follow on Twitter @chasegoodbread
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Alabama football wisely moving on from neutral-site games