Alabama is paying how much to smash Mercer? Cost of Week 12 buy game

The No. 10 Alabama Crimson Tide are making a last minute move to jockey for a spot in the College Football Playoff. Sitting at 7-2 and still in contention for the SEC title, they cannot afford any mistakes down the stretch.

Well, their Week 12 opponent will hardly offer anything that resembles a potential stutter step. Alabama will face FCS Mercer in a very late-season buy game on Saturday, forking over $600,000 to entice the Bears onto Saban Field at Bryant-Denny Stadium.

If you ask me, that's nowhere near enough compensation to head into Tuscaloosa for what's surely going to be a painful-to-watch beatdown. However, these kind of layups are actually very common for SEC teams.

Why does Alabama get to play a buy game this late in the season?

The SEC schedule is to blame. The conference plays an eight-game schedule compared to the nine games of others like the Big Ten. While most teams are deep in their conference schedules in November, every SEC team has an extra non-conference date to work with.

For high-profile programs like Alabama, the late cupcake matchup gives them more freedom to schedule marquee games against Power Conference teams earlier in the season. In this case, the Crimson Tide traveled to Madison and defeated Wisconsin 42-10 on Sept. 14.

A lot of other conferences feature plenty of buy games but most of those lopsided non-conference matchups come in the first month of the season. Since the SEC builds in an open date late in the season, we get these November buy games.

The smaller programs surely won't decline a good chunk of cash to get beat either. $600,000 isn't anything to sneeze at for team that isn't even in the FBS like Mercer.

In fact, the Bears have been through this odd yet completely legal dance before. The team received another $600,000 to lose 48-14 during the 2021 season.