ELITE. Brooks and Smart both like to talk about how Georgia’s fans and teams are elite. Georgia’s 2024 SEC schedule is ELITE. Georgia has traded former SEC East Divisional foes South Carolina, Missouri, and Vanderbilt for some combination of Mississippi State, Alabama, Ole Miss, and Texas. These are the matchups that fans want to see as realignment becomes part of our reality. Here is to hoping that the administration can meet in Destin and add the ninth conference game in 2025.In addition to Clemson, Georgia plays Tennessee Tech and UMass. They will close the season at home against Georgia Tech. The addition of Clemson is an instant upgrade over the 2023 non-conference schedule. Looking into the crystal ball, one would assume that UMass would be removed from the schedule. The game is scheduled for November 23rd and would be an ideal spot to have an additional SEC team on the schedule. Look for ESPN to salivate over the big television numbers that the S
The neutral site games generate a lot of money for Georgia. In 2022, Chick-Fil-A paid Georiga $5.9 million dollars to open the season at Mercedes-Benz Stadium and another estimated $4.5 million dollars to play Flordia down in Jacksonville. That is a lot of money that would be difficult to make up with a home game in Athens. One can’t help but wonder how much game experience on television and in the stadium would be enhanced if these games were played on campus.
Craig McMichael covers Georgia Bulldog Football for Last Word on College Football. Craig also covers D1 Lacrosse. Join in on the latest news and conversations on the SEC and college football on Twitter @mcmicha7
Georgia welcomes Auburn, Mississippi State, and Tennessee between the hedges in 2024. The league kept the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry with Auburn. 2024 will be year two for Hugh Freeze and the Tigers should be ready to make a jump. Tennessee was one of the hottest teams in 2022 and will look to continue to be one of the top teams in the conferences as they push ahead to 2024. There are more questions than answers for the future of Mississippi State with Zach Arnett replacing Mike Leach this season. The two neutral site game neutralizes some of the extra energy that could have been brought to Sanford Stadium in 2024. Here is hoping Josh Brooks brings more of those games back to Dooley Field in 2025 and beyond.
Must See TV. That is the best way to characterize the 2024 Southeastern Conference football season. First, the league officially welcomes Texas and Oklahoma to the conference. Every current SEC member will have either Oklahoma or Texas on their schedule in 2024. Goodbye to our favorite theme song, (Gary and Brett), and CBS. The SEC begins its new media rights deal with ESPN in 2024. Gone are divisions and instead, the two top teams meet in Atlanta to decide the champion. If there is a fault, the SEC won’t be playing nine conference games in 2024. Administrators couldn’t come to an agreement in Destin two weeks ago. The league office made up for it by putting together some great week-in and week-out matchups, especially when it comes to the defending back-t0-back national champions. Here’s a closer look and breakdown of Georgia’s 2024 football schedule.Georgia fans may want to travel with the team as they make their way through the SEC in 2024. Georgia plays all the hits as they visit Texas, Alabama, Ole Miss, and Kentucky in 2024. The Texas and Alabama games will no doubt bring in 10 million plus television eyeballs and electric stadiums. These are games that should be happening on an every-year or every-other-year basis. Georgia fans can trek to the Grove to pregame before facing the Portal King Lane Kiffin and his Rebels. Nobody can complain Georgia will have a cupcake schedule in 2024.
Georgia plays two neutral site games in 2024. They open the season against Clemson at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. Mercedes-Benz Stadium has become a second home for the Bulldogs. In 2022, Georgia played in Atlanta three times, dismantling Oregon to open the season, outlasting LSU in the SEC Championship game, and narrowly escaping Ohio State in the College Football Playoff Semifinals. Georgia will also play Florida in Jacksonville in the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party or whatever they are calling it these days. While these games look great on the schedule, one can’t help but think they would be even better on campus.
Kirby Smart has long talked about how important having home games are to recruiting. He has talked on and off about moving the Florida game to Sanford stadium and to the Swamp, but even he had to acknowledge the financial benefits of the neutral site games. “When it comes down to it, there’s a very, very basic element of everything that comes back to, number one money, and number two recruiting and getting good players. I firmly believe that we’ll be able to sign better players by having it as a home-and-home because we’ll have more opportunities to get them to campus. But, I also think there’s a financial factor that factors into that, with having the game there and being able to make more money for the university, possibly, there. You have to weigh both those and make really good decisions.” The Bulldogs figure to be the marquee attraction on Texas’ first SEC schedule, traveling to Austin to visit the Longhorns, and they’ll also have to play in Tuscaloosa: a daunting double bill for Kirby Smart & Co. Ole Miss and Kentucky alleviate the pain a little bit, but it’s going to be a tough go for Georgia as always. The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party will remain in Jacksonville through 2024, though the rivalry likely will move to campuses or another neutral site for at least the short term after that as the Jaguars’ home stadium undergoes extensive renovations.The SEC did not approve a nine-game schedule format for the 2024 season, either with one permanent opponent or three. Instead, the conference approved a one-year model for 2024 — likely the last in the conference’s history to feature just an eight-game conference slate — before revisiting a long-term solution for 2025 and beyond.The Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry dates to 1892 and it will be the Tigers’ turn to head to Athens in 2024. The Georgia-Tennessee rivalry will also be in Athens, with Mississippi State also visiting the Bulldogs.While the Bulldogs face an unimposing schedule in 2023 as they try for their third consecutive national championship — thanks in part to a long-scheduled game against the Sooners getting scrapped amidst conference realignment — their 2024 slate looks very difficult.In addition, the SEC will eliminate divisional standings beginning in 2024. The SEC championship game will feature the two top teams in the conference standings at the end of the regular season. The single-standings format will allow every school to play every other school a minimum of two times in a four-year period, regardless of whether the SEC utilizes an eight-game or nine-game format for future conference competition.
As the SEC prepares for another major makeover, divisions are being eliminated for 2024 and the league is set for at least one more year of an eight-game conference schedule before potential changes to that philosophy starting in 2025.
In the one-year schedule, SEC teams will play eight conference games plus one required opponent from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 or major independent during the 2024 season when the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas join the league.Georgia’s non-SEC Power 5 opponent for 2024 is Clemson. The Bulldogs are set to open the season Aug. 31 against the Tigers in a neutral-site game in Atlanta.
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Earlier today, it was announced that Georgia was expected to play at both Alabama and Texas in the 2024 season. That would make for a loaded-down schedule for Georgia as they would play Clemson at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atalanta and then at Alabama and Texas throughout the year. Many have been critical of Georgia’s 2023 schedule, but that doesn’t seem to be the case for the next season.
For the 2024 season, the SEC will eliminate divisions and no school will travel to the same school that they traveled to during the 2023 season. For example, since Georgia is hosting Ole Miss at home this season, they will travel to Mississippi during the 2024 season. So now that the speculation is over, though as Georgia’s 2024 schedule has officially been released. Here is who the Dawgs will be playing next year:A decision was made a few weeks ago that the conference would be moving to play an eight-game conference schedule as opposed to the other alternative, which was nine games. Now Georgia is gaining more knowledge as to who they will play next season as they already know they will play the Florida Gators, and many were hopeful that Georgia would get to play Auburn as well to maintain the historic rivalry.
While head coach Kirby Smart and Georgia’s football programs are currently preparing for the 2023 college football season, the Bulldogs’ schedule for the 2024 season has now officially been released.
Thanks to the Aggies’ move to the SEC, the in-state rivals haven’t played since 2011. The long layoff has done little to dissipate the animosity between the two fanbases.
Low reported the Crimson Tide will host the Bulldogs in Tuscaloosa, which will be just the fifth time they’ve played in the regular season over the last 20 years.
The Athletic’s Seth Emerson reported on May 29 that Commissioner Greg Sankey “privately has made his preference for a football schedule format clear to his members,” which appears to be the nine-game plan. However, 247Sports’ Brandon Marcello reported days earlier that Saban was among the voices calling to maintain the status quo.Georgia head coach Kirby Smart finally turned the tables on his old boss, Nick Saban, when his team took down Alabama in the 2022 College Football Playoff National Championship.Low first reported that each of the conference’s 14 member schools are also guaranteed a date with Texas or Oklahoma when the programs join the SEC in 2024. Georgia will be among the Longhorns’ opponents, with Alabama drawn against the Sooners.
Four of the past five meetings came in the conference championship or bowl season, and the exception was in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic capped the attendance at Bryant-Denny Stadium. Only 19,424 fans were on hand to watch the Tide beat the Bulldogs 41-24, with Mac Jones throwing for 417 yards and four touchdowns.
Seth Emerson is a senior writer for The Athletic covering Georgia and the SEC. Seth joined The Athletic in 2018 from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and also covered the Bulldogs and the SEC for The Albany Herald from 2002-05. Seth also covered South Carolina for The State from 2005-10. Follow Seth on Twitter @SethWEmerson With the eight-game format still intact, Georgia will have only three SEC home games. But it will still have six overall home games: Georgia Tech, Tennessee Tech and UMass, and only four true road games. (Clemson and Florida being at neutral sites.) Alabama and Georgia have a much more frequent and storied history, usually in the postseason. The last regular-season game between the two was also in Tuscaloosa, in 2020, when Alabama won. That was the return game in the normal SEC rotation, which is why the SEC didn’t feel the need to make this game in Athens.The annual rivalries with Florida and Auburn also remain, and Georgia will also play Kentucky and Tennessee — but not Vanderbilt, Missouri or South Carolina, teams it has played annually since the advent of divisions in 1992. (It was 2012 in Missouri’s case, in the last round of SEC expansion.)
