Mercer at Alabama in both 2017 and 2021

We share the same thoughts, Jackal. Two FBS games in one year is gonna be tough. Every single game that Mercer played last year was Division I. I hope that means that going forward we won't be playing against any non-D1 competition. There's no point when it doesn't help toward your playoffs resume.

You may. I sure don't. I doubt the Bears players and coaches will either.

As an FCS Player/Coach, I was involved in 7 games with FBS Teams and I EXPECTED to WIN all 7 of those.

I fell short of expectations though. We 'only' won 3 of them. Wins over South Carolina, Georgia Tech, and NC State. Losses to Clemson, North Carolina, Florida, and NC State.

3-4...Disappoints me to this day! 

I figured you would probably contradict me on that.  That is fine, of course.

As a neutral observer, I will expect Alabama to do to just about any FCS team what I saw them do to Charleston Southern (a really good FCS team) this season.  Thought the Bucs had a shot to make a game of it.  I was wrong.

Wondering if Mercer agreed to 2017 only conditional on getting another date. One earlier rumor was Vanderbilt. I'm sure the Bear Honchos would rather not have two SEC teams in one year, but it would make a huge amount of sense to get a second date in the deal.

Great for MU to play these P5 teams.....it really helps the program and showcases MU. MU needs to play 2 FBS every year!

For different reasons (ours is almost entirely financially driven), WCU continues to play at least 2 FBS games - we even played 3 a few years back. While exposure and the payday are great, my take is that if we play 2 I would really like for 1 to be against a team that is either geographically close and makes sense, or is a team that there is a legitimate shot to compete against. WCU played Tennessee and Texas A&M last year, which I think is too much. And we have played multiple games against Alabama and a game against Auburn the past several years when those guys played for or won National Championships. This coming year we play East Carolina and South Carolina book-ending our season - I like that much better. From the rumor-mill, it still appears we have contracted at least 2 FBS games for at least the next several years to come. Unofficially, this is what I think we have upcoming:

Upcoming Catamount Football FBS Opponents:
2015: at Tennessee - Sept. 19, 2015
2015: at Texas A&M - Nov. 14, 2015
2016: at East Carolina - Sept. 3, 2016
2016: at South Carolina – Nov. 19, 2016
2017: at Hawai'i - Sept. 2, 2017
2017: at North Carolina – Nov. 18, 2017
2018: at North Carolina – Nov. 17, 2018
2019: at N.C. State - Sept. 7, 2019
2024: at N.C. State - Aug. 31, 2024

No offense to FUBeAR, but historically and statistically a SoCon team versus an upper-tier P5 team is not a very winnable game (and that would be even more true against top-half SEC opponents). I understand the "any given Saturday" line of thinking, as I played at the FCS level, too. But in reality that is a tough hill to climb against really top-level teams. I am cool with playing NC State, ECU, South Carolina, etc. Last season the SoCon proved that FCS versus FBS isn't a big deal when you are talking about bad FBS teams (i.e. South Carolina losing to Citadel and UCF losing to Furman). But it is very tough to play the likes of an Alabama and another probable top-20 type team in the same season - you can lose the game AND take a physical beating doing so.

And as mentioned, having 2 per year definitely puts some serious pressure on your conference games and whatever you can scrape together for an OOC schedule. Western has won 7 games each of the past 2 seasons and I don't think we were in legitimate position to get an at-large bid to the playoffs because of the FBS losses being off-set by scheduling non-D1 games. So WCU would have really needed to go AT LEAST 8-3 last year (with only 1 SoCon loss) to have sniffed the playoffs. I don't expect it to be any different going forward for us.