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UAB football will be returning to the gridiron in 2017, and the program has already released scheduling plans for games against non-conference opponents. Alabama A&M, Ball State, Coastal Carolina and the Florida Gators are all scheduled to compete against the Blazers in the near future. 

The Blazers are set to play the Gators in the 2017 season, traveling to Gainesville to compete against the 2008 SEC Champions. However, UAB has no non-conference games scheduled for 2019 and only one game, against Coastal Carolina, scheduled for the 2018 season. UAB has played teams from each of the power five conferences — ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and the SEC — competing against teams like Ohio State, LSU and Mississippi State. So which power five school should UAB schedule to play in the future? Why not play a school that is two-and-a-half hours down the road?

That’s right. I say the Blazers should consider arranging a game against the Auburn Tigers. It only makes sense.

The last time the Blazers competed against Auburn in football was in 1996. The game, amassing over 80,000 people in attendance, was held at Jordan-Hare stadium. Led by Head Coach Watson Brown, the Blazers lost badly 29-0. This was UAB’s first SEC opponent. The green and gold were huge underdogs coming into the game having not yet finished a season with a winning record under Coach Brown. At this point, UAB has only two recorded win against an SEC school: once against LSU in 2000, when the team was led by Nick Saban, and another against Mississippi State Bulldogs in 2004.

Gus Malzahn’s Tigers have finished their non-conference schedule for 2017, however, Alabama State is the only team on Auburn’s non-conference schedule for 2018. According to the Montgomery Advertiser, the game will earn the Alabama State Hornets $515,000, as provided by the Tigers. If Auburn invited the Blazers to play at Jordan-Hare Stadium, there would likely be a multitude of fans that would travel the short distance to watch the Blazers play. In my opinion, the high-volume attendance generated by the matchup would be beneficial for both teams, earning profits and attention for both Auburn and UAB.

Auburn already has an athletic history with UAB, playing the Blazers in basketball, most recently in the Blazers’ season opener in 2015. The game drew approximately 1,000 Blazer fans to the Auburn Arena basketball stadium, all of whom came to see their team on the road, something that would be easily exceeded if a football game was held between the two schools. Auburn is scheduled to play UAB in Bartow Arena this season and it looks to attract flocks of fans of both teams to Birmingham. With the hype of reinstatement still fresh, if the football teams competed, they would likely draw a larger crowd of Blazer fans.

I advise UAB Athletics Director Mark Ingram and Auburn Athletics Director Jay Jacobs, for the diehard fans of southern football and for the fans of a team who is looking to make a statement after being risen from the dead: let’s make this happen.