Some people are missing the point about 8 conference games vs. 9, especially in the SEC. The main beneficiary isn't Alabama, though they do benefit (especially as long as Tennessee remains mediocre) from playing Georgia or Florida once every 6 years instead of once every 3 years. The big winners are the lower-tier SEC programs that are just hoping to be bowl-eligible.

Look at Missouri, for example. They play 6 SEC East teams plus Arkansas every year, and only have to play one of the other 6 SEC West teams. That means they only have to play Bama or Auburn or LSU once every six years, whereas if they had 9 conference games they'd have to play each of those teams once every 3 years -- i.e., every year they'd probably have one of the 3 on their schedule or else get unlucky one year and have two of them on the schedule. Missouri's path to 6 wins is much easier when they get a 4th non-con game instead of another game against an SEC West heavyweight.

It wouldn't be a burden on the Tide to have played Missouri instead of, say, Fresno State in 2017; in fact Bama's schedule would have been easier if they had played Mizzou instead. But playing Bama instead of UConn or Idaho would have dropped Mizzou from 7-5 to 6-6.

As far as the neutral-site games, it works for the Tide because of money. Because they can sell tickets in Atlanta and because ESPN pays for those games, the promoters of the games can pay millions to each participating school, so much that most teams make more from playing Alabama in Atlanta than they would by hosting the Tide.

The other monetary reason it works is that Bama's season-ticket base is sufficiently fanatical that they don't get up in arms about never getting a marquee non-con home game or about paying for 2 G5 games plus an FCS game every year. Other programs, even top programs, would get blowback from their boosters for the lack of more appealing home games, but when your ticket buyers are that forgiving, you have a lot of latitude.

And money is always going to drive these things. Always. The day that money is less of a factor in college football is the day that football coaches are riding unicorns over the rainbow.