re: Nick Saban (2008-2014) vs Kirby Smart (2017-2023)

quote:

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Kirby has the Dawgs rolling and imo will be in the conversation with Saban when he decides to hang it up but these records or comparisons are just stupid. The east has been a total shite show for years. They've had literally no push back to tend with. Let's see how many championships he has after 15 years

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Describing the SEC East as a total shitshow is overly harsh but I do think it's fair to say the SEC West has been considerably better the last 10 years with Florida and Tennessee (until last season) being down.

Just for fun I did a deep dive to compare Alabama's regular season schedules from 2008-2014 to Georgia's regular season schedules from 2017-2023 looking at the number of ranked opponents each team played and the opponent's ranking at the time they played as well as the number of true road games each team played against ranked opponents during each of the 7 respective season periods described in the OP. I didn't include the 2 road games Georgia played against during the 2020 season in the true road games aginst ranked opponents numbers because both stadiums were at 19% of their attendance capacity due to Covid. Here are the numbers:

Alabama played 36 ranked opponents from the 2008 thru the 2014 season with 14 of those being true road games:

2008 Alabama season:

#2 Florida (neutral)
@ #3 Georgia
#9 Clemson (neutral)
@ #15 LSU

2009 Alabama season:

#1 Florida (neutral)
#7 Virginia Tech (neutral)
#9 LSU
@ #20 Ole Miss
#22 South Carolina

2010 Alabama season:

#2 Auburn
#7 Florida
@ #10 Arkansas
@ #10 LSU
#18 Penn State
@ #19 South Carolina
#19 Mississippi State

2011 Alabama season:

#1 LSU
@ #12 Florida
#14 Arkansas
@ #23 Penn State
#24 Auburn

2012 Alabama season:

#3 Georgia ("neutral")
@ #5 LSU
#8 Michigan (neutral)
#11 Mississippi State
#15 Texas A&M

2013 Alabama season:

@ #4 Auburn
@ #6 Texas A&M
#13 LSU
#21 Ole Miss

2014 Alabama season:

#1 Mississippi State
@ #11 Ole Miss
#15 Auburn
@ #16 LSU
#16 Missouri (neutral)
#21 Texas A&M

Georgia played 31 ranked opponents from the 2017 thru the current 2023 season with 8 of those being true road games:

2017 Georgia season:

#2 Auburn ("neutral")
@ #10 Auburn
#17 Mississippi State
@ #24 Notre Dame

2018 Georgia season:

#1 Alabama ("neutral")
#9 Florida (neutral)
@ #9 Kentucky
@ #13 LSU
@ #24 South Carolina
#24 Auburn

2019 Georgia season:

#2 LSU ("neutral")
#6 Florida (neutral)
#7 Notre Dame
@ #12 Auburn

2020 Georgia season:

@ #2 Alabama
#7 Auburn
#8 Florida (neutral)
#14 Tennessee
@ #25 Missouri

2021 Georgia season:

#3 Alabama ("neutral")
#3 Clemson (neutral)
#8 Arkansas
#11 Kentucky
@ #18 Auburn

2022 Georgia season:

#1 Tennessee
#11 Oregon ("neutral")
#14 LSU ("neutral")

2023 Georgia season:

#9 Ole Miss
#12 Missouri
@ #18 Tennessee
#20 Kentucky

It is interesting to note that of Alabama's 6 regular season SEC losses from 2017 to 2023 only 1 of those 6 losses was to an SEC East team while 6 of Georgia's 8 SEC regular season or SEC title game losses were to SEC West teams over the same time span.