Alabama continues to beef up its future nonconference schedules, with the Crimson Tide on Thursday announcing a home-and-home series with Florida State for the 2025 and 2026 seasons.
Alabama will play in Tallahassee on Aug. 30, 2025, with FSU visiting Tuscaloosa the following season on Sept. 19, 2026.
Alabama coach Nick Saban told ESPN in August that his preference was to play at least 10 games in the regular season against Power 5 teams or Notre Dame, and that he was looking to make that happen on future schedules.
With the Florida State home-and-home series set, that means Alabama now has home-and-home series scheduled with Texas in 2022-23, Wisconsin in 2024-25, West Virginia in 2026-27, Notre Dame in 2028-29, Oklahoma in 2032-33 and Virginia Tech in 2034-35. Alabama will also open the 2020 season against USC in Arlington, Texas and face Miami in Atlanta in 2021.
“The addition of Florida State to the 2025 and 2026 schedules gives us our second nonconference Power 5 matchup of those seasons, as we also play Wisconsin at home in 2025 and West Virginia on the road in 2026,” Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne said. “We’ve been working diligently at building future schedules that provide our team and our fans a lot of excitement and opportunity, and we are pleased to add the Seminoles to that mix.”
Over the past decade, Alabama has played primarily neutral-site games against nonconference foes, but Saban told ESPN that there has been a concerted effort going forward by the Crimson Tide to schedule home-and-home series against marquee opponents.
The SEC and ACC are the only Power 5 leagues that play eight regular-season conference games, while the Big 12, Big Ten and Pac-12 all play nine. Saban has said repeatedly that he would be in favor of playing nine conference games in the SEC and that schools owe it to the fans to play more attractive games.
“I’ve always said, ‘Let’s play all Power 5 games,'” Saban told ESPN in August. “… We have to have a good show if we want people to come.”
Alabama leads all Power 5 schools with 17 games over the past three years against teams that finished the season ranked in the final Associated Press Top 25 poll. The Crimson Tide are 14-3 in those games, including a 4-2 record in the College Football Playoff.