This is an opinion column.

The buzz around the state is unmistakable.

After more than a decade, a Power-5 non-conference opponent is finally coming back to Bryant-Denny Stadium. The once-novel natural site games in NFL stadiums are gone and the arrival of fellow blue-blood Texas on Saturday is to be lauded. Penn State was the last such power to make the pilgrimage before it was all Atlanta, suburban Dallas and Orlando for marquee games against big names from outside the SEC.

No doubt, the atmosphere in the 100,077-seat coliseum will be electric.

But a few volts will be left on the table — more specifically, the nosebleeds.

Alabama officials opted to return the favor when Texas relegated the full Crimson Tide seating allotment upstairs in Austin. All 5,000 of the seats allotted to the visitors for the 6 p.m. CT Saturday game will be in the stratosphere, just as Alabama’s were last September in Darrell K. Royal Texas Memorial Stadium.

“We are able to reciprocate a similar seating arrangement to what we had last year in Austin,” was the artfully worded quote from Alabama AD Greg Byrne to the Tuscaloosa News this week.

CASAGRANDE: Sark’s Iron Bowl win was test drive for Texas return, now he’s back for more

Sure, nothing requires Alabama to use Sections MM and NN for the visiting delegation like for every other home game. Packing more crimson closer to the action will probably make the stadium a little louder when the LED lights twinkle with Dixieland Delight and various hits from the 2010s pump through the PA.

But the charm of what makes these home-and-home meetings for first-time visitors special is the communal experience.

Tension is elemental on college football game days so banishing dissenting voices to the next solar system kills that.

This goes both ways.

It was lousy last year when Alabama opted against bringing its band to Austin because they’d need oxygen tanks to reach their bench seat. The 11 a.m. kickoff played on the surface of the sun didn’t exactly encourage travel and those who made the trip were banished to the upper corner.

Unlike the SEC, the Big 12 doesn’t require members to block off lower bowl seats for visitors. That almost makes what happened last year more understandable since Texas sells season-ticket packages based on that rule — a bad one — but still in place. Those lower-bowl seats in Bryant-Denny are only sold to the general public if the visitor can’t fill the allotment.

It was and is a shame.

Sacrificing what makes college football atmospheres special to get a few more local fans closer to the field feels short-sided. Texas on Tuesday said they’d still be sending their band to sit atop one of the Bryant-Denny end zone upper decks.

GOODMAN: Between Dabo and Deion, one is more like Saban

This is a further escalation of an ongoing fragmentation of visiting seating allotments in SEC stadiums. For league games, the conference requires each school to provide a minimum of 2,000 lower-bowl tickets — half of which must be in a single seating block. Again, it’s better than other leagues with no such stipulation but a long way from what it once was.

At Bryant-Denny, that’s typically those Sect. MM and NN seats in the northeast corner. The rest of the visitor seats are found in the upper 10 rows of the end zone second deck. They’re lousy seats that fragment the guests and discourage them from making the trip in the first place. With Texas making its first trip to Tuscaloosa since 1902, there should still be a healthy migration to Tuscaloosa. It’s just not as fun without a healthy and contiguous visiting delegation to offer a counterpoint to the majority.

Alabama, mind you, is far from alone.

The folks at RateYourSeats.com have seating maps of stadiums across the nation and their visiting team allotments. They look more like Alabama congressional districts than a recipe for robust gamedays.

At least the SEC has the lower-bowl requirement, but it used to be so much better.

A brief shot from AL.com’s recent Iron Doc series on The Shula Years shows LSU taking the field before a 2005 trip to Tuscaloosa. Four lower bowl sections were packed with purple and gold, band included, in what looked like an insane environment. That was, of course, before either end zone had an upper deck, so it wasn’t as easy to banish the travelers to the Mal Moore Mountain Range.

At Auburn, three lower-bowl sections in the corner go to the guests along with four upper deck locations in the top corners of Jordan-Hare Stadium.

Could be worse.

Should be better.

And that’s the whole point here. In an age where attendance is dipping and administrators are doing their best to realign the soul of the sport, why not bring some spice back into the recipe?

Nobody who’ll leave Bryant-Denny on Saturday night will knock atmosphere because it’ll probably be the best in years. Evening kick against a power that hasn’t visited since 1902?

Huge.

But could have been just a hair better.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.