College Football: 8 non-conference home-and-homes that need to happen

Big college football home-and-home non-conference games are becoming more common, and there are more we’d like to see.

With the recent announcement of the Alabama-Ohio State home-and-home series, non-conference games are on everyone’s mind. Most of the top-tier games are scheduled way in the future — 2025 and well beyond — but that isn’t stopping the excitement from pouring in.

Home and homes finally seem to be gaining more traction. We’ve gotten more home and home series announcements as of late than neutral site. As cool as it is to see a college game in an NFL stadium, the games just don’t have the same atmosphere as they do on a college campus, especially if ESPN’s College GameDay is in town.

Alabama is one of the programs has loaded up its future schedule. Dates against Texas, Notre Dame, Oklahoma and Virginia Tech are just some of the names to appear. Other teams have also beefed up their schedule: Oklahoma vs. Nebraska, Ohio State vs. Notre Dame and UCLA vs. Wisconsin are just a few of the marquee series in the future.

These games open the door for other teams to schedule major non-conference opponents. The College Football Playoff committee has shown that it’s much easier to recover from a loss to a top-tier team, even in somewhat of a blowout, than it is in a close loss to a mediocre program.

There are quite a few more games that would be great for everyone involved, from the program, to the fans even the universities as a whole. Whether now or years down the road, these would make for excellent football.

Before we dive into some of these, a couple notes: adding “rivalry” games seems like cheating because of course there are some classic games that should come back. As a result, only one of those games will be added to the list. Also, non-conference games already scheduled will not be on the list, so you won’t see a game like Penn State against Auburn.

Finally, recently played series won’t be on the list. That means a game featuring Texas against LSU won’t make the cut.