Alabama and Wisconsin announced a home-and-home series to be played in the 2024 and 2025 seasons. The Crimson Tide will travel to Wisconsin on Sept. 14, 2024, and Wisconsin will play in Tuscaloosa on Sept. 13, 2025.
"We are excited to add another high-caliber, non-conference game to our future schedule," Alabama head coach Nick Saban said. "We played a great game with Wisconsin in Arlington a few years back and this home-and-home series will be a tremendous opportunity for our programs to play in two of the best atmospheres in college football. Matchups like this are so important to the health of college football because it provides fans exciting matchups and players new challenges."
This marks the first time Alabama will travel to Big Ten country for a game since playing in a home-and-home series with Penn State, where Alabama played the Nittany Lions in the 2011 season.
The Crimson Tide have played Big Ten opponents in recent seasons, but the games have all been played on a neutral field outside of the Penn State game in 2011. Michigan lost to Alabama 41-14 in 2012 when the two played at Cowboys Stadium in Texas, and Wisconsin lost to the Saban-led Alabama team 35-17 in Arlington, Texas, in the 2015 season.
Alabama had scheduled a home-and-home series with Michigan State that would have brought the Crimson Tide to East Lansing in 2017, but the series was canceled before it was played.
The announcement comes only a few days after Saban addressed complaints of soft scheduling on ESPN's Golic and Wingo Show, explaining that he is for all programs scheduling higher-ranked opponents.
"I think the culture of college football would benefit if we said Power 5 teams have to play all Power 5 teams," Saban said. "I've been an advocate of this for several years. I've been an advocate of playing more SEC games. Well I think you should do it like basketball. They have RPI, or whatever it is, in basketball that says these are the teams that played the best schedule and won the biggest games. So that's how you qualify for a bowl game, not how many games you win."
Saban went on to explain that there have been challenges for Alabama to schedule quality opponents, that the Crimson Tide have tried to improve their schedule but have not had much success doing so.
"One of the reasons we played all these neutral-site games is that's the only way we could get a quality opponent," Saban said. "And if you are in a conference where your natural rivalry is out of your conference, like Georgia plays Georgia Tech every year. So they have to get one more game and they've got 10 Power 5 schools.
"Our two natural rivalries are in our league, so we don't have one of those, so we have to get two teams to play us every year and we've done a pretty good job of that for the most part. People look at this year's schedule and say, 'Why are they not playing more out-of-conference schools that are more highly ranked?' Well, we tried, is all I can tell you. We tried and we try every year."
Alabama's trip to Wisconsin will be only the fourth time an SEC team will play a game at Camp Randall Stadium, joining LSU in 1971, Alabama in 1928 and Auburn in 1931.