Alabama has reportedly been searching high and low for opponents to add to their 2015 and 2016 football schedules, and now they may have found one.
Tom Groeschen of the Cincinnati Enquirer reported today that the Cincinnati Bearcats have had discussions with Alabama about playing some future football games.
Hearing that #UC has talked with #Alabama about future football dates. 2015 Nippert opener among possibilities. #Bearcats
— Tom Groeschen (@TomGroeschen) June 17, 2014
Alabama is currently scheduled to open the 2015 season in Arlington against the Wisconsin Badgers. If the Tide were to play a “Nippert opener” in 2015, it would have to be the 2nd or 3rd week of the season.
But that doesn’t seem likely because it would leave Alabama with only six home games that season. Most SEC schools prefer to play seven homes games to rake in the additional revenue.
On the other side, Cincinnati already has four non-conference games set for 2015. In order to play Alabama in 2015, they would have to postpone or cancel one of those games.
In 2015, the Bearcats are slated to host Alabama A&M (Sept. 5) and Miami, FL (Oct. 3) and travel to Miami, OH (Sept. 19) and BYU (Oct. 24).
Cincinnati is scheduled to host BYU and Miami (OH) and travel to Purdue in 2016.
Alabama’s only other non-conference games currently scheduled are ULM (Sept. 26, 2015), Western Kentucky (Sept. 10, 2016), and Colorado State (2017).
Last month during the Spring meetings in Destin, Florida, Alabama head coach Nick Saban lamented on how hard college football scheduling is.
“We can’t just call people up and say we want to have a game,” Saban said. “It’s not like setting up a golf game. I call three of my buddies and say ‘You want to play Sunday morning. Can you play? Then everybody says yeah, I can play’
“You ever try to schedule a game? Do you know what goes into that? And it’s very difficult to do home and home with quality teams. And there’s only certain teams, to be honest with you, you almost have to buy games to get people to play you. Outside of the neutral site game we do and our conference games, we struggle to schedule three other games.”
Football Schedules
Nick Saban is complaining about not getting home and home games? That is major B.S. by him.
It was Alabama that caused the series with Michigan State to be cancelled because Alabama was unwilling to return to East Lansing. Alabama wanted the first game at Tuscaloosa and wanted the 2nd game (MSU home game) to be at a neutral site.
Where is your proof?
Alabama’s AD cancelled the series when the SEC was deciding whether to go to 9 Conference games. Not because Alabama was unwilling to travel or they wouldn’t have scheduled it in the first place.
If Cinci cracks the top 25 Saban will cancel.
This would be one of Alabama’s better OOC games if they can make it happen.
How is that if they are already playing Wisconsin?
I’m not saying it would be the best, it would be right behind the Wisconsin match.
Bama cancelled the Michigan State series to take the Wisconsin game, since neutral site games mean more revenue. While I would have liked us to play Michigan State and Wisconsin, that would have been one hell of a schedule, combined with the typical SEC slate. That being said, if that had happened, and we emerged with only one loss, maybe even two – you could go ahead and pencil Bama in for a slot in the 4-team playoff.
Why the heck would Cincinnati host Alabama at Nippert? They could sell 25,000 to 30,000 more tickets (at about $100 each) by playing the Tide at Paul Brown Stadium, i.e. they’d make $2.5 million to $3 million more at PBS.
Because they want bigger name opponents to come to Nippert which will be newly renovated and expanded. If they play at PBS, there is a rental fee for the stadium (and security I believe) along with sharing the concession revenue. UC is going to play all their 2014 home games at PBS while Nippert is being renovated, so it makes sense to open the 2015 home schedule with the biggest named school they can get.
Forget tiny Nippert. This game needs to be played at Paul Brown Stadium.