Starting with the 2022 season, Alabama football began doing something new. Whereas the Crimson Tide were previously known for playing marquee games at neutral sites like Atlanta toward the beginning of seasons, instead, they began playing a home-and-home series with Texas.

That seems to be the new way forward for Alabama, with the Longhorns making the trip to Tuscaloosa this season. In the coming years, the Tide will pay home-and-home series against the likes of Wisconsin, Florida State, Ohio State and West Virginia.

On Monday, Saban explained the change in philosophy.

“I think that one of the reasons that we did (neutral site games) was 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. Probably the Clemson game that we had (in 2008 in Atlanta) 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.”

Conference realignment has thrown college football’s scheduling for a loop. The SEC announced next season, with Texas and Oklahoma joining the league, that it will continue playing an eight-game conference schedule for one year.

After that, it’s all up in the air. The league could expand to a nine-game schedule, and that’s assuming it doesn’t add any more schools in the endless quest for more television revenue.

But at this point, Saban said the plan going forward is to continue with home-and-home matchups.

“To have more quality home games for the fans to see becomes a little bit more, I think, important,” Saban said. “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 conference realignment, and what can happen in the future. So there’s a lot of factors that go into it.”

Alabama faces Texas at 6 p.m. Saturday at Bryant-Denny Stadium. The game will be aired on ESPN.

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