It's one of the oddest matchups on the college football schedule this season.
Alabama—winner of six of the last 14 national championships and arguably most prolific college football dynasty of all time—will be playing Saturday at South Florida. It's a true road game, not a neutral site game, and marks the first time the Crimson Tide have played a team from a Group of Five-equivalent conference on the road since visiting Hawaii in 2003.
Why is Alabama visiting the Bulls, who are a dismal 5–30 dating back to the start of the 2020 season? Athletic director Greg Byrne gave several justifications to Nick Kelly of The Tuscaloosa News in an article published Monday afternoon.
Byrne cited the opportunity to play in Florida’s recruiting hotbed, the prospect of playing in an NFL stadium (Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium, home of the Buccaneers), the two-for-one trade-off the deal entailed (i.e. South Florida will play in Tuscaloosa in 2024 and ’26), the financially friendly nature of the contract and the presence of Crimson Tide fans in the Sunshine State.
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“This just made so much sense because of geography,” Byrne said. “We have a lot of fans down on the Gulf Coast that we’re going to be able to have a lot of them get to this game easier maybe than coming to Tuscaloosa.”
Alabama, traditionally a fairly homebound program apart from neutral site matchups, has a number of true road games lined up in the near future. The Crimson Tide are scheduled to play at Wisconsin, Florida State, West Virginia, Ohio State, Oklahoma State, Notre Dame, Georgia Tech, Boston College, Minnesota, Arizona and Virginia Tech over the next 12 seasons.
