This past offseason, while players rested and coaches recruited, marketing teams nationwide went to work, promoting the upcoming fall.

In Tampa, Fla., the University of South Florida athletic department pushed season-ticket sales. When that campaign wound down, USF athletic director Michael Kelly said the team had a clear directive. More billboards and digital advertisements for Week 3. The Alabama Game.

This Saturday’s contest (2:30 p.m. CST, ABC) will be the first of an unusual three-game series between No. 10 Alabama and the Bulls. It was agreed to four years ago when current Alabama defensive analyst Charlie Strong was USF’s head coach. In an era of conference realignment and the Tide’s decline of neutral-site games, scheduling middle-men and College Football Playoff ties created an unlikely sun-soaked getaway game for the Tide in Tampa.

“It came about by opportunity,” Kelly said. “This particular year, I think, was the key that kind of made the opportunity worth discussing. Finus (Gaston, Alabama senior deputy athletic director) and I had the first conversation. … Once there seemed to be enough comfort, then we were able to say this two-for-one business deal makes sense for all concerned.”

The contract details, reviewed by AL.com, essentially amount to a home-and-home series with an added-on, discounted guarantee game — a normal practice of a major conference, or Power 5, program when it pays a non-power conference team to travel to the Power 5 team’s stadium.

In the first two years of the series, 2023 and 2024, the home team will pay the visiting team $400,000. For the 2026 meeting in Tuscaloosa, the end of the deal, Alabama will pay USF $1 million. By comparison, the Tide paid this year’s Week 1 opponent Middle Tennessee State $600,000 more. It bought Louisiana-Monroe a “weight room” last year with a $1.95 million payout.

American Athletic Conference referees will officiate this weekend’s game in Raymond James Stadium. SEC officials will get the whistle in Bryant-Denny Stadium. Assuming there’s no band-seating beef as in the Texas two-game set, the contract designates each program will offer 5,000 seats to the visitor at face value.

One clause in the contract states that “teams acknowledge the long-range nature of football schedule planning, and that the conference schedule rules, including the requirement to play minimum number of games each season … the teams agree to discuss in good faith a future date(s) for the game(s) to be played.”

The SEC will stick with an eight-game schedule in 2024 but the future is uncertain if a ninth game will be added, which could impact USF’s trip to Tuscaloosa in 2026.

“It’s been our goal, now this was before conference realignment so that may have some impact on future, was we want to since we’re not going to play a neutral site game, can we get two quality opponents to be able to play in every season besides the SEC games,” Saban said this week, ” … and look it’s not easy to find people that will play you. And sometimes you have to give and take a little bit to try to get those games to where we have a quality home schedule.

“Scheduling is very difficult. We’ve tried to get it where we’re playing two (quality) teams and I think most years we are.”

For Kelly, operating a program competing with fans of the Buccaneers (NFL), Lightning (NHL) and Rays (MLB), Alabama signified a “marquee power to get everybody’s attention.” Kelly was the former chief operating officer of the CFP and had worked with the Tide’s Nick Saban and athletic director Greg Byrne. The result was the Tide’s first non-power conference game in 20 years.

Last week’s 34-24 home defeat to Texas was historic for the wrong reasons — the worst home loss in the Saban era and one of the earliest season losses he’s suffered in his career.

The Tide settled around 30-point favorites against USF but will face a scheme that’s caused it troubles before. New Bulls head coach Alex Golesh was Tennessee’s offensive coordinator a year ago. The Volunteers’ spread motion, up-tempo attack put up 385 passing yards against the Tide.

The only other time in the last 15 games Alabama’s allowed more than 300 was last Saturday versus the Longhorns with Steve Sarkisian deploying similar concepts.

“It’s a good market for our fan base in Central Florida. I think it’s all good,” Saban said Wednesday night. “But I think it’s only good if you play good. Image is something you’ve got to work to really have in terms of what I talked about before in terms of standard. How you play and the thing you do so that pride in performance is going to be important no matter where we play.”

Nick Alvarez is a reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @nick_a_alvarez or email him at [email protected].