Subwoofers have motors behind them that take up a lot of space. So you may not be able to put two back to back without a fairly wide cabinet. If you end up with a wide baffle anyway, you're kind of reducing the point of having the subs on the sides.
I think most side firing designs have multiple woofers with smaller motors and voice coils to address this problem. Multiple woofers mean more surface area and therefore less excursion necessary to generate low frequencies at high DBs.