How do Alabama schools build their non-conference football schedules?

Joel Erdmann was at a soccer regional at Florida State when his phone light up with a call from an unknown California number.

The caller wanted to know whether South Alabama needed a home-and-home series after UAB folded its program in Dec. 2015. After Erdmann made clear that he very much did, the caller from San Diego State pitched South Alabama on heading west in 2015 with a promised return trip to Mobile in 2016.

"That deal was done in about three minutes," Erdmann says.

It doesn't get much better than that though it rarely works out that smoothly. It took years for Alabama and Florida State to get on the same page for this weekend's highly anticipated Chick-fil-A Kickoff Classic in Atlanta. Each school has different needs and scheduling philosophies; two schools simply wanting to play each other isn't enough. More often than not, it takes patience, coordination and lots of communication to get a deal done.

"Football scheduling consumes more of your time than people realize," Erdmann says. "It's four games a year, but it's four very important games a year. You pay a lot of attention to it."

"A wolf in sheep's clothing"

In the state of Alabama, each of the five FBS schools handles its non-conference scheduling a little differently. It should be obvious that what Alabama needs compared to Troy is quite different, but even within the two groups (Power 5 and Group of 5) there are significant strategic differences.

Alabama's non-conference scheduling preferences are well established. The Crimson Tide will play a marquee opponent on a neutral site in the season opener, two Group of 5 schools early in the season and then an FCS opponent the week before the Iron Bowl. Alabama already has Louisville and Duke as its big games on the docket through 2019. The strategy is undoubtedly both successful and lucrative -- the Tide will make at least $5 million for playing FSU -- but does deprive fans of a home-and-home series against a big program.

"It's worked really well for us," says Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne. "For the foreseeable future, we'll continue that model."

That model includes not playing any of the state's FBS schools not named Auburn. All three of the Group of Five schools -- USA, Troy and UAB -- have initiated conversations with Alabama about scheduling a game but haven't gotten any traction.



Auburn has been more open to the idea of playing in-state schools -- AD Jay Jacobs told AL.com in June he'd love to play UAB again -- but hasn't scheduled any through 2020. Auburn utilizes a similar strategy as its in-state SEC rival but has been more willing to schedule big home-and-home series. Auburn will travel to Clemson in Week 2 for what could be a top 10 showdown and easily the biggest game of the week. Its next two marquee games, however, will both be at neutral sites when Auburn plays Washington in Atlanta next year and Oregon in Arlington in 2019.

When Jacobs is looking to buy a guarantee game, he relies on an assistant athletic director to make the initial calls and put together a list of available schools with open dates in their schedules. "When you find those openings, me and the other athletic director talk and work out the details," Jacobs says.

With those guarantee games, Jacobs and other Power 5 athletic directors pay big bucks to try to ensure a win. Auburn will pay Georgia Southern, a Sun Belt school, $1.3 million to serve as its Week 1 appetizer before Clemson next week. When you are an athletic director at a smaller FBS school, you know the deal when a big school calls about scheduling a game, but that doesn't make it any less awkward.

"It's a wolf in sheep's clothing," says UAB athletic director Mark Ingram. "They are trying to buy what they think is a win."

Ingram understands why he's so popular with Power 5 ADs these days: They think the freshly resurrected Blazers are easy prey. The benefit of the perception the UAB program will need years to rebuild is Power 5 schools are willing to pay more. It has allowed UAB to only play one guarantee game a year after generally playing two annually before the 2014 shutdown. UAB plays Florida this year, Texas A&M next year and Tennessee in 2019.

"I can make the College Football Playoff, but the likelihood of me making the College Football Playoff is extraordinarily slim. What's a victory for a Conference USA school? It's a bowl game," Ingram says. "My funding model requires us to play one of these guarantee games, but if I can play one instead of two, that's an enormous lift for us. It gives me one more game to get to six wins."

Head coach influence varies

The biggest misconception about non-conference scheduling is that Nick Saban or Gus Malzahn picks out the opponents he wants each year, and it becomes a reality. Saban and Malzahn are both involved in the process, but athletic directors are almost exclusively negotiating the deals. How much influence the head coach has on scheduling depends on the school and the relationship between coach and AD.

At Auburn, Malzahn isn't picking the four schools he wants to play each year, but his opinion is solicited and carries weight.

"I always run things by Gus and get his thoughts on them," Jacobs says. "We come to a mutual understanding and decide on what's best for Auburn."

It's a similar situation at Alabama between Saban and Byrne. Alabama isn't going to schedule an opponent Saban is adamantly against, but he's not in the room negotiating dates and fees with Middle Tennessee State. He did play a significant role in this week's Alabama-Florida State getting scheduled, dating back to a long relationship with Chick-fil-A Kickoff Classic CEO Gary Stokan. It took three years after initial conversations about the game to get Saban and FSU coach Jimbo Fisher, a Saban disciple, comfortable with the game.

"There was a lot of back and forth with both coaches," Stokan told Sports Business Journal. "You never know who will say yes to what, especially when it's friend versus friend."

UAB head coach Bill Clark seemingly has the most laid back approach of the five in-state FBS head coaches about non-conference scheduling, letting Ingram handle the majority of it on his own.

"I'll say to Bill we need a guarantee game in 2022, here are the teams available and looking for a game," Ingram says. "I'll ask, 'Do you care?' And normally for the guarantee games, he doesn't really care."

Clark did influence UAB's decision to play Texas A&M in 2018 instead of Oregon. The idea of playing at Oregon and getting West Coast exposure was attractive to university leaders, but Clark reminded Ingram that his program doesn't recruit out there and would be better served to play in Texas. Not only is UAB more likely to recruit a Texas recruit than an Oregon one, the opportunity to play on SEC Network, which is widely available in UAB's geographic base, was far more advantageous than being on the Pac-12 Network which has long had distribution problems.

The future of scheduling

South Alabama hosts a top 10 Oklahoma State team in Week 2, a relic of a scheduling philosophy once in vogue. In 2010, USA agreed to a two-for-one with Oklahoma State, not knowing what kind of team would end up arriving in Mobile seven years later.

It showcases both the positives and negatives of scheduling so far in advance. In one sense it's incredible that a top 10 team is playing at South Alabama -- SBNation even deemed it the weirdest Power 5 road trip of this season -- but it gives USA two very challenging games against Power 5 opponents to start the season. South Alabama will open its season this weekend at Ole Miss.

Erdmann still likes scheduling far in advance -- the school has games scheduled through 2026 -- but don't expect South Alabama to plan another two-for-one anytime soon.

Says Erdmann: "We think we've experienced that benefit and it was a good thing but moving forward, unless there are extenuating circumstances, we'll tend to stay away from it."



Troy has gone through the same progression in recent years. Neal Brown told AL.com's Mark Heim in May that the Trojans were "out of the two-for-1 business." "We feel like we've risen our program to a point where it doesn't make sense for us to play two-for-one any longer," Brown said.

How far out to build the non-conference schedule is a question every athletic director has to consider. The farther out you go, the more difficult it is to forecast what kind of program you'll be playing. Erdmann even admitted it's impossible to know what the Jaguars will be facing in 2022 when they travel to play UCLA. The flip side is if you strike early, you can at least get favorable geographic matchups.

When UAB announced in June 2015 it would bring its football program back, Ingram was handed a blank canvas. The school had already bought its way out of its scheduled games and had to start building a schedule as soon as possible. The UAB AD has games scheduled through 2020, including a 2019-20 series against South Alabama, but his general philosophy has been to not schedule too far into the future. He's betting prices for guarantee games will keep rising, providing plenty of financial incentive to be patient. All it takes is one guarantee game to fall through to force a Power 5 school scrambling and willing to pay big money at the last minute. In that scenario, UAB could be the prettiest girl still at the bar at last call.

There are plenty of risks with that. If Saban's pitch that Power 5 schools only play each other ever came to fruition, it'd cripple schools banking on the big guarantee game payday. Similarly, if Power 5 conferences moved to nine conference games, it'd eliminate hundreds of opportunities for Group of 5 schools. It could pay to have deals locked up far into the next decade if Power 5 conferences ever did that. 

"None of us know what the landscape will look like," Ingram admits. "If any of those leagues go to more conference games, that will change things. Good or bad, I don't know."

No matter what the landscape looks like, one thing is certain: Ingram and the other ADs will be working the phones and their connections, trying to put together a favorable non-conference schedule.

For FBS athletic directors in Alabama, they all want the same thing: the most advantageous deal. The only difference is the process to get it.

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated that Alabama had a game scheduled against Georgia Tech. A planned series between the two schools was previously indefinitely postponed.

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