The art of scheduling football games can get tricky.
Put simply, the SEC provides eight of the 12 regular-season games Alabama plays every fall. The other four are fair game. A fairly standard formula has developed as the Crimson Tide fills out the four non-league games.
After the season-opening neutral-site game against a big-conference school, it has two non-Power 5 home dates in September. That leaves one Saturday in November for more taste of SEC-free football. Every year since 2009, Alabama's used that to play a Football Championship Subdivision team in that slot. It played teams from the former Division I-AA earlier in Saban's first two Alabama seasons.