CDC attempted to secretly schedule a home-and-home with aggy
Had to settle for Alabama
BON: You set up the home-and-home with Alabama rather quickly. Alabama hasn’t played a true road non-conference game since traveling to Penn State in 2011. What sparked that game and how complicated is the process setting up these marquee nonconference games?
CDC: If you look at our scheduling right now for a moment. The philosophy has always been to have a big-time opponent. This year we have USC on the back end of home-and-home. Then we have LSU, home-and-home. Then we have a return game to Arkansas. Then Alabama, Michigan, Ohio State, and Michigan again. So I think our philosophy is always trying to play a significant brand opponent as one of our three non-conference games. And that’s been great.
With the Alabama game, we had Ohio State reach out to me and ask to move our game back a couple years because they were able to schedule Notre Dame. I understood that. I said, “Okay, but let me find a game before we do that.”
The athletics director at Alabama is a dear friend of mine and said ‘Hey, do you want to play a home-and-home?’ And I said ‘Yeah, let’s do that.’ And we were able to do that.
We talked briefly to (aggy). (aggy) was already booked at the time and couldn’t do it. Alabama had an opening and away we went.
* * *
BON: So you actually have already talked with (aggy) about a potential game?
CDC: Yeah, I said “Hey, if I’m able to move this game does it make sense?”
But see the problem isn’t that they said no.........