It’s Alabama-Tennessee week, and for the second year in a row it’s a game of national significance.

For both teams, the rest of the 2023 college football season will be determined by the outcome of the Third Saturday in October. The good news for Alabama is that Tennessee’s offense isn’t anything close to the orange blur that burned the Crimson Tide last season. The good news for Tennessee is that Alabama isn’t anywhere close to the imperial dreadnought that once called all of college football its empire.

Bryant-Denny Stadium will be the backdrop for one of the classic scenes in American sports on Saturday, but this next subplot shouldn’t be lost on anyone either. It’s more important than all the rest.

If the SEC is getting rid of annual secondary rivalries after 2024, then it also means that this could be the last time one of the best rivalries in college football is played at Bryant-Denny Stadium in a few years. For Alabama and Tennessee, the third Saturdays in October could never be the same again.

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It’s a sad thought, but that’s apparently the price to be paid for adding Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC in 2024. When Alabama and Tennessee don’t play each other during the regular season in 2025, then at least you’ll know who to blame.

No one is really talking about this yet, but the addition of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC in 2024 is forcing the league to make a tough decision on how it schedules games. The SEC says nothing is official, but to hear Nick Saban tell it that’s not anywhere close to the truth. After 2024, the league is apparently going to a seven-and-one scheduling model.

That means a team plays seven rotating opponents and one fixed opponent. For Alabama, the fixed opponent would presumably be Auburn. As for Alabama vs. Tennessee? If a rivalry game called the Third Saturday in October isn’t played every year on the third Saturday in October, then maybe it needs to be named something else.

I’m looking forward to Texas and Oklahoma joining the SEC, but not at the expense of an annual rivalry game as important as Alabama vs. Tennessee. There are a lot of Alabama fans who say Tennessee-Alabama is a more heated rivalry than the Iron Bowl. The game could be saved if the SEC chooses a six-and-three scheduling model, but that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening behind the scenes.

The SEC is dropping the two-division format in 2024, so we already knew that annual matchups like Auburn-LSU and Alabama-Mississippi State were going away. The SEC released the 2024 conference matchups back in June. The schedules for next season feature rivalry games like Alabama-Tennessee, Auburn-Georgia and Florida-LSU. The future of those annual games is in doubt, though, after comments made by Auburn coach Hugh Freeze and then Saban.

Thank Freeze for being the first whistleblower. He first hinted at the scheduling changes a few weeks ago when I asked him a question about recruiting. Freeze then doubled down during a talk with the Monday Morning Quarterback Club in Birmingham.

“I’m going to miss playing Georgia every year,” he said.

Freeze walked back that comment, but Saban all but confirmed the scheduling changes last week during his radio show.

“The way we’re going to do our seven-team, one-team fixed, you’re going to play everybody every four years, so almost every guy at your school is going to get to play every team in your conference,” Saban said.

The league office hasn’t commented officially on the scheduling models, but if changes are coming then it would have been nice to alert fans to the significance of the rivalry games this season. Of course, it’s possible that Freeze and Saban are wrong and that the league could still go with the six-and-three model. Who really knows what the future holds for college football at this point? The SEC will have 16 teams next season, but more teams could be added in the future.

At that point, schedules would have to be changed again.

Why do annual games like Alabama-Tennessee have to go away? The reason is because the SEC wants to put as many teams as possible in the upcoming 12-team College Football Playoff. If the SEC adds an extra game for everyone, then that means half the league will have an extra loss every year.

Is the SEC going to be better with fewer rivalry games or more? That seems like something important to consider, too. Is the soul of the SEC better or worse without Alabama vs. Tennessee every year?

If it means both teams make the College Football Playoff, then maybe it’s a good trade off. For now, and maybe for the final time, the Third Saturday in October is where two national championship contenders will square off inside Bryant-Denny Stadium, but only one will survive.

Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of “We Want Bama”, a book about togetherness, wild times and rum. You can find him on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.