TUSCALOOSA | The University of Alabama continued its scheduling of prominent home-and-home football series as UA and Wisconsin announced a home-and-home series between the Crimson Tide and Badgers for 2024 and 2025 seasons on Monday.
“We’re happy to have added another quality non-conference opponent for a home-and-home series in Wisconsin,” said Alabama director of athletics Greg Byrne. “Traveling to Camp Randall, one of the nation’s oldest stadiums, will make for a great road contest early in the 2024 season. Having them return the trip in 2025 to Bryant-Denny Stadium will also certainly provide a boost to our home slate, and we look forward to the opportunity.”
“It’s exciting and healthy for everyone,” Barry Alvarez, the UW director of athletics and Hall of Fame coach, told UWBadgers.com, the schools athletics website. “When we were contacted to see if we would be interested in a home-and-home with Alabama, I told them, ‘Let me check first with (head coach) Paul (Chryst).’
“Naturally, I would be interested.
“So, I asked Paul and he said, ‘Absolutely.’
“And we both really liked the fact that the first game is going to be here.”
The first game will take place in Madison, Wis., on September 14, 2024, with Wisconsin returning the trip to Tuscaloosa on September 13, 2025.
“It’s going to be awesome to have Alabama in Camp Randall,” Alvarez said. “And it’s going to be a great experience for our players and fans to be able to go down there (Tuscaloosa) and see the atmosphere and the intensity that they have for football in a SEC stadium.”
In the 2016 opener, the Badgers beat LSU, 16-14, at Lambeau Field in Green Bay.
“All along, I’ve felt like we can match up with people and be competitive with anyone. We’ve shown that in bowl games against Southeastern Conference teams. And now, we’re going against the best in Alabama, a program that has consistently been in the playoffs and playing for a championship.”
Alabama and Wisconsin have met on two occasions with the series tied at one game apiece. Alabama won the most recent matchup, 35-17, in the AdvoCare Kickoff Classic in Arlington, Texas, to open the 2015 season. The first meeting was the Crimson Tide’s only visit to Madison, a 15-0 loss in 1928.
“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.”
Alabama opens fall practice on Friday, August 2, and is scheduled to open the 2019 season on August 31 in Atlanta against Duke in the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game. The home opener is slated for September 7 against New Mexico State at 3 p.m.
With the addition of Wisconsin in 2024 and 2025, Alabama has added five home-and-home series to future schedules recently, including Texas (2022 & 2023), West Virginia (2026 & 2027), Notre Dame (2028 & 2029) and Oklahoma (2032 & 2033).
Reach Cecil Hurt at cecil@tidesports.com or via Twitter @cecilhurt
