Vanderbilt releases 2017 football schedule; Alabama is coming to Nashville

The Vanderbilt Commodores played the Alabama Crimson Tide every year from 1945 to 2002, but since then, they’ve played only three times: in 2006, 2007, and 2011.

But the Tide are once again on Vanderbilt’s schedule in 2017, as the Commodores released their football schedule for next season on Tuesday.

Unlike the past five years, Vanderbilt will not open the regular season on a Thursday night — in fact, the Commodores will play all 12 games on Saturdays in 2017. The Commodores’ season opener will be September 2, 2017, at Middle Tennessee.

The full schedule:

While the SEC schedule was fairly predictable, aside from the Alabama game, there’s some shuffling. The Kentucky game returns to its usual place in November; prior to 2014, Vanderbilt had played Kentucky in November every year going all the way back to when Bear Bryant was their head coach. The Missouri game remains in November; after being an October game from 2012-15, it moved to November this year and will be there again in 2017. I sort of like the idea of closing the schedule with Kentucky, Missouri, and THEM every year. Can we keep doing that?

Meanwhile, the South Carolina game moves to the end of October, after being in August or September in five of the last six years. Western Kentucky and Middle Tennessee are on the schedule for the third year in a row, but we already knew that. Vanderbilt will face Alabama A&M for the first time ever, while Kansas State is on the schedule for the second time ever — the first time was in 1984, a 26-14 Vanderbilt win, but that was when K-State was bad at football.