Wisconsin football announces home and home series with Alabama

Wisconsin football dropped some big news on all of us today, announcing that the Badgers have scheduled a home and home series with the mighty Alabama Crimson Tide. The series is scheduled for 2024 and 2025 with the first game being in Madison. This home and home series will be a replacement to the long anticipated Virginia Tech home and home that was scheduled for those dates, but has since been pushed back to a later date of 2031/2032.

Alabama will travel to Wisconsin on September 14th, 2024 for the first time since 1928 according to Winsipedia. In that game the Badgers took down the Tide 15-0. In more recent years Wisconsin and Alabama met to open the 2015 season in Arlington, Texas. The Badgers fell to the Tide 35-17 in that neutral site meeting. Alabama coming to Wisconsin will mark the fourth time an SEC school has played at Camp Randall, the last being against LSU in 1971.

In 2025, the Badgers will complete the second leg of the home and home by traveling to Tuscaloosa on September 13th. It will mark the first time that the Badgers have played at Alabama in the school’s history. Wisconsin’s trip marks only the second time that the Badgers have played at an SEC school, the last being LSU, again, in 1972.

It’s clear that the heads of Wisconsin football and the athletic department have made a concerted effort to build a strong non-conference schedule. Whether it be to help the resume in playoff talks, or improve the state of the programs, it’s apparent that these games are huge for all of college football and healthy for both teams. Wisconsin has been a big proponent of these type of games by scheduling the likes of Alabama and LSU in the past, as well as Notre Dame (2020/2021), Washington State (2022/2023), Pittsburgh (2026/2027), UCLA (2029/2030), and Virginia Tech (2031/2032) in the coming years.

The biggest dynamic of the newly scheduled series with Alabama is the fact that it is a true home and home series. While fans always want to see their team play in big games, it’s even better when it’s on the home turf of the schools rather than at anodyne NFL stadiums. Of the aforementioned series currently scheduled, only the Notre Dame series will be at neutral sites (Lambeau Field and Soldier Field). While neutral site games have always been big for teams, it appears that more and more programs are looking to get the game back to great college towns like Madison and Tuscaloosa.