Started By
Message

re: Who has 2 or more P5 OOC Opponents on your Reg Season Sched in 2024?

Posted on 5/12/24 at 4:44 pm to
Posted by DawginSC
Member since Aug 2022
4625 posts
Posted on 5/12/24 at 4:44 pm to
Look, the reality is quite simple. Due to the SEC expansion in 1992 and having an 11 game schedule, UGA lost the ability to have good OOC schedules until the NCAA went to 12 regular season games.

The reason is UGA (just like EVERY OTHER SEC team) wanted to have at least 6 home games every year. But because UGA had GT every year and a neutral site conference game counting as a home game every other year (the Florida game), this made it hard to get OOC P5 teams to come play UGA without a return trip. So UGA pretty much played GT OOC while UF played FSU, with little else.

Once the NCAA went to 12 game regular seasons though, UGA immediately opened up their scheduling. They started by immediately adding Clemson several times and added home and homes across the nation against teams like Arizona State, Oklahoma State, Colorado and Notre Dame. They also added some neutral site games in Atlanta (mainly to keep OTHER SEC teams from having kickoff classic games in Atlanta which UGA viewed as detrimental to their recruiting). The played Boise State, UNC, Oregon and Clemson in those games (as well as having a game against UVA that was cancelled in the Covid year).

UF added Miami a few times, but due to FSU being a tougher opponent than GT (which is 100% true) they didn't go much beyond playing FSU and occasionally Miami until very recently in their OOC schedule. UGA was much more aggressive in their OOC scheduling.

No other SEC teams regularly went beyond 1 OOC P5 a year once the NCAA went to 12 games either. Some who weren't playing a P5 OOC every year at least started playing one every year, but it was rare until the last couple of seasons for any of the other SEC teams to play more than 1 P5 OOC (the next closest team in scheduling 2 OOC P5's was probably South Carolina).

This is why claims that UGA doesn't schedule well OOC are laughable. UGA literally has the best OOC scheduling since the NCAA went to 12 games a year. And that happened 18 seasons ago. UGA is keeping their edge going forward as more schools in the SEC are looking at 2 OOC P5's. UGA has four years in the next 10 scheduled with THREE P5's OOC.

And they aren't just playing mid-level teams. they have FSU, OSU and Clemson on the schedule (all teams who made the 4-team playoff) and played Oregon and ND OOC in the past few seasons (both teams who made the 4-team playoff). They also had games scheduled against Texas and OU that were cancelled when they joined the SEC (two more teams who made the 4-team playoff).

UGA = best OOC scheduling of any team in the SEC.
first pageprev pagePage 1 of 1Next pagelast page
refresh

Back to top
logoFollow SECRant for SEC Football News
Follow us on Twitter and Facebook to get the latest updates on SEC Football and Recruiting.

FacebookTwitter