Can we petition to replace the Duke kickoff game with UCF?

Anything would be better......can we convince Richt to move up the Miami game?

Saban was kinda pissed that Duke wouldn't move that game in 10 to a neutral site.

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I hate that we have Duke as our neutral site game, but UCF would be way worse. 2 years ago they went winless, this is not a long term stable program.

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Yep. I'm pretty sure that this Duke game was scheduled right after the year that they somehow ended up in the ACC championship game. The point is, that game looked a little better then, but by now they are a terrible program again. UCF would be the same way. If we scheduled them for 2020, it would hurt our SOS once we got there. These games are scheduled too far out. There's no way to know how good of a matchup it will be, and when we end up getting a good matchup, we steal their soul, causing their team to go off the rails. Look at FSU this year. That was called the biggest opening game in CFB history, but by the end of the season it was being used to show how weak our OOC schedule is. It's a lose-lose situation for us.

You can petition anything. Go ahead.

Hell, can we petition to replace Duke with Troy? At least the money would stay in state.

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replace the Duke kickoff game

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Sure.

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with UCF?

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No.

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Plus, we owe Duke one. They canceled a game to make room for a us a few years ago. We had to travel to them, but they still helped us out.

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Not true. We don't owe Duke anything. The 2010 game at Duke was the second of a home-and-home contract; Duke came to Tuscaloosa in 2006. In fact, Duke turned down an opportunity to sell the game to a neutral site and make more money.

"The home team had an option to move the game to a larger, neutral site but chose instead to keep the game in the cozy on-campus stadium. That left a potentially more lucrative plan on the table because NFL stadiums in Atlanta and Charlotte could have accommodated much larger crowds in the return game of a home-and-home series. Alabama won the first meeting 30-14 in 2006.

“I think there’s always temptation when you’re talking about a great deal of money, but this thing is bigger than money,” Cutcliffe said. “I was amazed that (athletics director) Dr. (Kevin) White and (president) Dr. (Richard) Broadhead both just never flinched. They want what’s best for our program, and the best thing for our program is to play the big games at our stadium. A lot of things have changed here.”

Back in the 1990s, Duke traded the rights to host ACC opponent Florida State to Jacksonville and Orlando for cash effectively selling home games back to the already-superior home team."

LINK

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Not true. We don't owe Duke anything. The 2010 game at Duke was the second of a home-and-home contract; Duke came to Tuscaloosa in 2006. In fact, Duke turned down an opportunity to sell the game to a neutral site and make more money.

"The home team had an option to move the game to a larger, neutral site but chose instead to keep the game in the cozy on-campus stadium. That left a potentially more lucrative plan on the table because NFL stadiums in Atlanta and Charlotte could have accommodated much larger crowds in the return game of a home-and-home series. Alabama won the first meeting 30-14 in 2006.

“I think there’s always temptation when you’re talking about a great deal of money, but this thing is bigger than money,” Cutcliffe said. “I was amazed that (athletics director) Dr. (Kevin) White and (president) Dr. (Richard) Broadhead both just never flinched. They want what’s best for our program, and the best thing for our program is to play the big games at our stadium. A lot of things have changed here.”

Back in the 1990s, Duke traded the rights to host ACC opponent Florida State to Jacksonville and Orlando for cash effectively selling home games back to the already-superior home team."

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As I understood it, we went into that deal with a handshake agreement that Duke would not schedule that at home and our admin was pretty pissed that Duke backed out. It was even rumored that we would play the return game at Legion Field.

Still can't believe we scheduled them again. Should've at least made a deal where their basketball team to comes to Coleman.

Looking over Duke's non conference schedule for the last 10 seasons (2007-08), it looks like all of their non conference road games fall into 4 categories:
1.) Tournaments (Champions Classic, Battle 4 Atlantis, Maui Invitational, etc.)
2.)Neutral Sites in major arenas (Izod Center, Madison Square Gardens, Wells Fargo Arena, etc.)
3.) Neutral Site game against small schools in other arenas in their area (Like our games the past two seasons in Huntsville)
4.) Road games at Big 10 schools as part of the ACC/Big 10 Challenge

There is only exception in the last 10 years: They played at Michigan on December 6th 2008 (they played at Purdue 4 days earlier for the ACC/Big 10 challenge)

Good luck ever getting Coach K to ever bring his team to Tuscaloosa.

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I'm pretty sure that this Duke game was scheduled right after the year that they somehow ended up in the ACC championship game. The point is, that game looked a little better then, but by now they are a terrible program again

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That 2013 Duke team was just okay. If they scheduled this game thinking they were becoming a good program because they had one decent season, that's just terrible