The SEC officially released their 2011 football schedule Wednesday morning, and Alabama and its fans won’t be singing nearly as many bye-week blues as were warranted a year ago.
During the 2010 season, the Tide faced six of their eight conference foes as they were coming off bye weeks. As the Tide was coming off a national title, that led some to grouse -- while dodging black helicopters flying overhead -- that the fix was on against the ‘Bama boys and their hopes of a repeat. The head coach, though, wasn’t one of them. (Unless it involved the Iron Bowl, of course.)
“It’s not going to be an excuse for us,” Nick Saban said last year. And it most definitely won’t be an excuse this year, either.
In the recently-released conference schedule, Alabama officially learned it will face just three schools coming off their bye weeks -- Vanderbilt, Tennessee and LSU. As the Tide will have their bye week the same weekend as LSU, and Vandy is, well, Vandy, the Tuscaloosa school has seen their bye “disadvantage” drop from six down to a more manageable one.
Also, and unlike last year, Auburn won’t be coming off a bye week ahead of the Iron Bowl; the SEC “gently nudged” the Tigers into agreeing to move their game against Samford to the weekend prior to the in-state rivalry game.
However, how do the Tide’s three official games against teams coming off byes compare to the rest of the conference? Judge for yourself:
Arkansas -- 0
Auburn -- 0
Florida -- 1 (Georgia)
Georgia -- 2 (Florida, Auburn)
Kentucky -- 1 (Mississippi State)
LSU -- 1 (Alabama)
Ole Miss -- 1 (Arkansas)
Mississippi State -- 0
South Carolina -- 0
Tennessee -- 1 (South Carolina)
Vanderbilt -- 0
It should be noted that there are only ten “conference” bye weeks as Tennessee (vs. Buffalo) and Kentucky (vs. Jacksonville State) have their lone 2011 off-weekend ahead of nonconference foes.
For a complete look at the SEC’s weekly schedule, click HERE. For a grid version of the weekly slate, click HERE. For the team-by-team slates, click HERE.