Jacksonville State coach Rich Rodriguez said his team would gladly play Alabama — for a price.
On the weekly “Rich Rod Show,” which Eli Gold hosts every Monday evening in Jacksonville, Rodriguez was asked by a caller about encouraging in-state matchups between teams in the state of Alabama.
The caller mentioned the season-opening matchup between Alabama and Western Kentucky, as opposed to the Crimson Tide playing an in-state team.
“If they want to pay me $2 million, I’ll be down there on Saturday and Sunday, I’ll play them twice, get four million and help our budget,” Rodriguez said. “They can beat our brains in for a couple million dollars, for sure.
“I’ll call my buddy Greg Byrne, the AD down there, and say ‘listen, Greg, we’ll go down there for $2 million, and if you want to do the back-to-back, we’ll go for $4 million and have a great time.’ I’ll even sing ‘Roll Tide’ for them, if they want.”
Rodriguez was the head coach at Arizona from 2012-2017, a hire that was made by Byrne during his tenure as the athletics director at Arizona.
The former Jacksonville State coach went on to talk about how during his time at West Virginia, a game against a solid in-state Group of Five team “wasn’t a game you really looked forward to.”
“In West Virginia, Marshall was the other Division I team,” Rodriguez said. “We’re at West Virginia, you’re supposed to beat Marshall, right? So, I wasn’t really in favor of playing them, it wasn’t going to be a home-and-home deal. We wind up doing it, and thankfully, we wind up and won.”
Alabama has not played an in-state team other than Auburn since a game against Howard, now Samford, in 1944, according to research done by AL.com’s Creg Stephenson.
