Alabama is not spending Friday night in Starkville. Kalen DeBoer confirmed on his weekly radio show that the Crimson Tide will bus over on Saturday morning for a game that kicks at 11 a.m. local time, which is the kind of scheduling decision that gets a coach roasted if it goes wrong.
No. 7 Alabama is 4-0 and 2-0 in the SEC. No. 16 Mississippi State is also 4-0 and 2-0. This is the best game on the Week 6 board, it is on ABC at noon Eastern from Davis Wade Stadium, and Alabama is favored by 6.5.
The Reason Is the Hotels
DeBoer was direct about why, and the reason has nothing to do with sports science. It comes down to real estate.
“When it comes to staying at a place that suits what we need, I don’t know if those places kind of fulfill those expectations,” he said. “You want those accommodations and things like that when it comes to meeting rooms and such, and we have that here with our hotel and all of that.”
Translation: the options within range of Starkville do not have the meeting space Alabama wants the night before a game, so the team will use its own hotel in Tuscaloosa and drive. The trip runs roughly 90 miles.
“Believe me, I’ve checked how long of a trip it is, too, but I’m always accounting it’s a little bit quicker with the way we will roll,” DeBoer said.
He Says Alabama Has Done This Before
DeBoer leaned on precedent, and it is worth being precise about whose precedent it is. “Some of it was, I just trusted what was done before here. 2023 it was done the same way,” he said. “I guess I just trusted a lot of what we have done in the past, and that’s the best way to do it.”
That is DeBoer’s account of how the staff before him handled this trip. What is on the record is the result of that 2023 game: Alabama went into Starkville and won 40-17.
The Morning Thing Cuts Both Ways
DeBoer thinks the body clock actually favors his team. “An 11 o’clock kickoff. We’re a morning practice team. We’ve had some success with those morning games, but we got to go on the road and travel that morning. So, it’s gonna be a little different.”
He has a case. Alabama checks in for practice around 6:45 a.m. as a matter of routine, so an early kick is closer to normal for this roster than it would be for most. The players also get something out of the arrangement, as DeBoer put it: “They’ll bank some sleep, some extra hours to make sure they’re ready to go on Saturday.”
This Is a Real Test, Not a Tune-Up
The risk is that Alabama is treating a ranked road game like a scrimmage. Mississippi State is not that anymore. Jeff Lebby’s third team opened 62-13 over ULM, won 38-13 at Minnesota, took down South Carolina 41-34 on the road and then beat then-No. 19 Missouri 31-24 by coming back in the fourth quarter.
Alabama has been the more complete team: 48-10 over East Carolina, 45-17 at Kentucky, 50-36 over Florida State and 49-18 over South Carolina. DeBoer is 24-8 since taking the job and signed a seven-year, $87.5 million extension in April.
If the Tide come out flat at noon in a hostile stadium, the travel plan is the story all week. If they win, nobody mentions it again. DeBoer clearly believes his own routine beats a mediocre hotel, and given how this team has played through four games, that confidence has been earned.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.