Each Monday leading up to the 2017 Alabama football season we will focus on a Tide opponent. The series will progress from the projected worst team to the best.
Mercer Bears – November 18 – Tuscaloosa
Mercer is the Tide’s 2017 FCS opponent in the game slot that has become known as ‘paycheck weekends’ for FCS schools. Since 2005, many SEC schools have added FCS opponents to their schedules in late November in advance of big rivalry games the next weekend.
Despite many lop-sided pairings, the games are valuable to the less competitive schools by boosting their football revenues through sizable visiting team guarantees.
While the games are not usually competitive, there are exceptions. The most notable exception was the Appalachian State upset of Michigan in 2007. In 2013 Georgia Southern beat Florida. In 2015 The Citadel beat South Carolina.
Alabama football fans will remember a 2011 game against Georgia Southern. The Tide won that game by 24 points but the outcome was most unsatisfactory to Nick Saban. Georgia Southern scored 21 points on a vaunted Tide defense.
The video below not only includes Nick’s comment on Georgia Southern but his spirited position that no opponent should ever be taken for granted.
After reviewing that video, we made a mental note to never ask Saban about ‘paycheck games’ or overmatched foes. The bleeped out Saban words were from the phrase, “they ran through us like shit through a tin horn” – an outhouse reference that aptly described the game.
When picking a 2017 team, least likely to beat Alabama football, it has to be Mercer. Mercer discontinued football at the start of WWII. The Mercer football program was revived in 2011 and entered play as a scholarship school in 2014.
Mercer has won 18 games over the three seasons since, including a winning record of 6-5 last season. The Bears have won eight SOCON conference games in the period, four of them last season. In 2016, Mercer had a respectable 35-10 loss to Georgia Tech.
Mercer has an earlier ‘paycheck game’ in 2017 when it travels to Auburn to play the Tigers. SOCON experts have early predictions of Mercer winning 3-4 conference games in 2017.
The best Mercer Bears players are redshirt junior defensive end Isaiah Buehler and junior wide receiver, Marquise Irvin. Irvin played high school football at Madison County High, just outside Huntsville, AL.
Since Nick Saban will never read this, we predict Mercer has no chance to beat Alabama football in November 2017, or for that matter ever on a football field.
Next: 30 Great Tide Players who were 3-Star recruits
Next Monday will be episode two of the worst-to-best 2017 Alabama football opponents. We have already made our week two pick, but starting with week three, this task will become progressively more difficult.