MOBILE, Ala. — South Alabama has scheduled home-and-home football series with three other start-up or restarting programs, Georgia State, Lamar and Texas-San Antonio, for the 2010 through 2012 seasons.
The university announced the agreements last week. Two of the series begin next season.
Lamar
Lamar, which dropped football in 1989, is scheduled to resume play next year and will be the first of the three to face South Alabama. The Jaguars will play at Lamar on Oct. 16, 2010, and the Cardinals will come to Mobile on Sept. 10, 2011.
The 2011 game against Lamar will be South Alabama’s first home game of the season in which the program begins its two-year transition to the Football Bowl Subdivision.
Georgia State
South Alabama will host Georgia State on Oct. 30, 2010, and play at Georgia State in Atlanta on Oct. 22, 2011.
Georgia State announced the creation of its football program in April 2008 and will begin play in the fall of 2010, with home games at the Georgia Dome. The Panthers hired Bill Curry, a former head coach at Alabama, Kentucky and Georgia Tech, to build the program.
Texas-San Antonio
UTSA announced in December 2008 that it will begin playing football in the fall of 2011. South Alabama will play the Roadrunners in October 2011, and UTSA is scheduled to be the Jaguars’ season opener on Sept. 1, 2012.
UTSA hired Larry Coker, the former head coach at Miami, in March to lead its program.
Jones: Programs That Can ‘Grow With Us’
South Alabama head coach Joey Jones said scheduling programs at a similar stage made sense for a team in its first years.
“We felt like playing schools the first couple of years in the same boat we are starting a brand new football program would be a great thing,” Jones said. “With Bill Curry coaching at Georgia State and Larry Coker at UT-San Antonio, I believe they will bring us some credibility with the type of programs they are going to run.”
Jones said he hopes future scheduling includes similar schools. “As we move on with scheduling hopefully we will continue to play schools like these that will grow with us, maybe they can develop into rivalries,” he said.
Future Schedule Commitments
With the new series, South Alabama has two games scheduled for 2010, five for 2011 and three for 2012. The Jaguars have previously announced:
- A four-game home-and-home series with Navy
- A two-for-one series with Mississippi State, with two games in Starkville and one in Mobile
- A two-for-one series with NC State
- A two-for-one series with Kent State
- A game at Tennessee in 2013
South Alabama will become eligible to compete for the Sun Belt Conference championship and to play in a bowl game in 2013.
The Jaguars play their first game Sept. 5 at Ladd-Peebles Stadium.
