What every Alabama fan needs to know before the 2024 football season

Change has ruled the college football landscape for the past several years.

Fans have had to adjust to the transfer portal, conference realignment and name, image and likeness deals, just to name a few changes.

Well, fans will need to buckle their chinstraps a little bit tighter because even more changes are coming for the 2024 college football season.

Here’s what you need to know, with an emphasis on how these changes will affect University of Alabama football fans:

Alabama football on television

Say goodbye to Gary Danielson calling Alabama football games. After decades with CBS, the Southeastern Conference begins a 10-year deal with ABC this season.

More: As the Tide turns: A look back at the transition from Saban to DeBoer

SEC games will still be on the ESPN family of channels and the SEC Network, but ABC will now join the party. UA’s first game on ABC this season is set for 6:30 p.m. Sept. 28 against the Georgia Bulldogs.

One change fans may have already noticed is that kickoff times have been assigned much earlier with ABC/ESPN.

With CBS, fans sometimes had to wait until the week before the game to learn whether their team’s game would be televised and what time it would kick off.

ABC/ESPN’s “flex” schedule assigns afternoon and evening kickoff windows to some games. For instance, the Alabama-Tennessee and the Alabama-Auburn games will kick off at either 2:30 or 7 p.m. with the television channel to be announced later.

ABC will also broadcast the SEC Championship Game, which is scheduled to kick off at 3 p.m. Dec. 7 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.

And for fans who miss Gary Danielson, he will be calling Big 10 games this fall on CBS.

Alabama football on the radio

Eli Gold , who has been the voice of Alabama football since 1988, will be replaced this season by Chris Stewart on a permanent basis for the Crimson Tide Sports Network.

Stewart has been with CTSN since 1998 and has been the voice of the Alabama men's basketball team over that span.

Stewart has already been calling UA football games the past two seasons; in 2022, he filled in for Gold who missed the season while fighting cancer. Gold came back in 2023 and the two split games; Stewart took away games and the postseason while Gold called home games and the Iron Bowl.

Now, Stewart will be the sole voice of the UA football program.

Last spring, Gold announced that he will do television broadcast work for Jacksonville State University baseball and football.

Texas and Oklahoma join the SEC

This season will mark the first for Texas and Oklahoma as members of the now 16-team SEC.

How will that affect Alabama? The most notable way is the change in Alabama's schedule. Gone for 2024 are longtime regular foes Arkansas, Ole Miss, Mississippi State and Texas A&M. And Alabama will take a Nov. 23 road trip to Norman, Oklahoma, to face the Sooners.

UA kept Tennessee, LSU and Auburn as fixed opponents each year. The rest of the SEC members will rotate in from year-to-year.

One other change to note about the SEC expansion that could affect UA: The conference has done away with the East and West divisions. That means the SEC Championship Game will match the top two teams in the league standings based on winning percentage.

College Football Playoff expansion

Twelve teams will compete in the College Football Playoff in 2024, instead of the four-team format that has been in place since the CFP began in 2014. UA has only missed the playoffs twice ― after the 2019 and 2022 seasons.

Here's how the 12-team format will work this season:

The four highest-ranking conference champions will be seeded 1 through 4 and receive first-round byes. The CFP first round will consist of four games played at home campus venues, with teams seeded 5-8 hosting teams seeded 9-12 (Yes, this means that Bryant-Denny Stadium could potentially host a playoff game).

The first round of games will be played Dec. 20-21. The quarterfinals will be played Dec. 31 and Jan. 1, with the Fiesta Bowl, the Peach Bowl, the Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl serving as host sites.

The semifinals will be played Jan. 9 at the Orange Bowl and Jan. 10 at the Cotton Bowl.

The championship game will be played Jan. 20 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.

A new football coach in Tuscaloosa

Just in case you've been living in a cave and missed the news, Nick Saban retired in January as Alabama's football coach after 17 seasons and six national championships in Tuscaloosa.

Just days after Saban's retirement, Kalen DeBoer was introduced as the new coach of the Crimson Tide. DeBoer comes to Tuscaloosa from the University of Washington, where he led the Huskies' 2023 squad to the college football championship game.

In his nine seasons as a head coach, DeBoer has won 104 games while losing just 12. His head coaching resume includes two years at Washington, two years at Fresno State and five seasons at the University of Sioux Falls, where he led his alma mater to three NAIA national titles.

DeBoer's first game as the Crimson Tide football coach is set for 6 p.m. Aug. 31 against Western Kentucky at Bryant-Denny Stadium.

Meanwhile, Saban has joined ESPN as an analyst and he will be part of the ESPN Gameday crew every Saturday. Saban is still on the UA payroll as a consultant and he has maintained an office inside Bryant-Denny Stadium.

Reach Ken Roberts at ken.roberts@tuscaloosanews.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: What every Alabama fan needs to know before the 2024 football season