Georgia football: SEC discusses moving Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry
Georgia football’s annual meeting with Auburn may be changing dates as the Tigers want to separate their games with Georgia and Alabama.
For the first time since 1936, a regular season meeting between Georgia and Auburn might not take place in November 2020. And that might be the norm for a few years. Georgia football, Auburn and the SEC are reportedly planning on moving the game to earlier in the year starting in 2020. The new spot on the schedule will remain until at least 2024.
The reason for the move is simply because Auburn wants to break up trips to Athens and Tuscaloosa. When the SEC added Missouri and Texas A&M in 2012, it created a scheduling hiccup, and the solution for the hiccup was changing the location of the 2013 edition of the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry. The Bulldogs were forced to travel to Auburn in 2012 and 2013 and haven’t yet received their makeup home game.
As a result, Auburn is left traveling to play their two biggest rivals in even years, and hosting them in odd years. Georgia, on the other hand, is left relying on a headlining non-conference game or a top-notch SEC West team to stir interest in the home schedule in odd years.
Typically there’s only a week separating the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry and the Iron Bowl, so this stretch for Auburn is considered one of the most difficult three-week periods for any team in the entire nation, especially in years Auburn has to travel to both schools.
After the 2024 season, the SEC will reset rotating schedules. Georgia will likely receive a home game against the Tigers in 2025, returning to the status quo from before SEC expansion. With Auburn no longer having to travel to Athens and Tuscaloosa every other year, the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry may return to original date. But that last part is not a certainty.
If the schools and the SEC finalize this deal, it’ll be the second time Auburn has caused a shakeup in SEC scheduling. When the conference first expanded in 1992, and broke into divisions, each school had two protected rivals. The Bulldogs met Auburn and Ole Miss every year. Auburn also had to play Florida every year. By 2000, Auburn thought they had the most difficult schedule in the SEC with two powerhouses as their cross division rivals. They complained to the SEC, and the conference took away one protected rival from each team.
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All parties are still working on finding a good date for the rivalry, and how that’ll affect each team’s existing schedules. For Georgia, the South Carolina game has jumped around the schedule a lot since 2012, so I believe that’s the most likely conference game to be moved to November permanently.