FCS foe is Bama’s Iron Bowl tuneup
For a ninth consecutive football season, Alabama is hosting a Football Championship Subdivision program the week before facing rival Auburn in the Iron Bowl.
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga has been that opponent on three of those occasions — 2009, 2013 and last season, when the Mocs held a 3-0 lead after the opening quarter before falling 31-3. The Crimson Tide will host the Mercer Bears of the Southern Conference at noon Eastern this Saturday.
Alabama coach Nick Saban was asked about playing FCS foes during his turn Wednesday on the Southeastern Conference’s weekly teleconference, and he did his best trying to state his opinion while also understanding the opposite viewpoint.
“We get the schedule from the SEC, and we’ve got holes to fill,” Saban said. “We do the best we can in scheduling. You’ve heard me talk before about scheduling. I think we ought to play all Power Five conference schools, but nobody wants to do that.
“Everybody wants to get bowl eligible, and I get that.”
When the SEC went to divisional play in 1992, Alabama and Auburn decided to move their game up a week and have the benefit of an open date before the league championship game in case the Crimson Tide or Tigers won their division.
The Iron Bowl winner did, in fact, represent the West seven of the first nine years of the event.
Beginning in 2007, the SEC required every member to play on Thanksgiving weekend, which is the weekend before the conference title game. Alabama was upset by Louisiana-Monroe the week before the 2007 Iron Bowl, had an open date before the 2008 Iron Bowl and has faced FCS foes before the Iron Bowl ever since.
Saban has been outspoken for several years now about bumping the SEC schedule from eight to nine games and having the three other contests against Power Five conference opponents. Before going too far down that road Wednesday, he also realized what Saturday means to the Bears.
“I know it’s an opportunity for the players at Mercer to play a Power Five conference school, which is a great experience for them,” Saban said. “I played at Kent State, and when we played a bigger school, it was a great experience for me. We beat North Carolina State when I was a sophomore, which was a big game.
“We had other games against Pitt and Iowa State when we didn’t do so well, but I still remember the experience of playing in those kinds of games.”
Tide tidbits
Saban said in a news conference Wednesday evening after practice that injured outside linebackers Christian Miller (biceps) and Terrell Lewis (elbow) are in the “functional phase” of their rehabilitation but that they have not been cleared to play. … Saban on having walked past someone before the news conference who was wearing cut-up jeans: “When I was a kid in West Virginia, I was ashamed to go to school because my jeans were wore out only because we didn’t have any better. Now they buy them that way. How did we get here?”
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.