Changes to Georgia football's non-conference schedule may be coming soon

As everyone likely saw coming, there is a lot of drama and debate on social media after the final edition of this year's College Football Playoff rankings were released on Sunday. Thankfully Georgia football is not part of these debates as they were guaranteed a spot in the top four of the bracket after winning the SEC Championship. Some other SEC teams however were not so lucky.

Alabama and Ole Miss were some of the first teams left outside of the 12-team bracket after both finished the season 9-3. Both teams felt they had a good argument to be included because of their strength of schedule and wins over Georgia, but that was not good enough for this year's committeee.

So instead of prioritizing the teams who played the toughest schedules and beat really good teams, the committee put a team like SMU in who does not have one top 25 win this season.

This sets a dangerous precedent moving forward, because what motivation do teams have to schedule difficult non-conference opponents? Especially from the SEC's perspective, they will face enough good teams during their conference games to build a quality resume, so they may not need to schedule difficult non-conference games going forward.

Alabama Athletic Director Greg Byrne made it very clear that the Tide are going to reconsider how they schedule non-conference games in the future. And one day later, Georgia Athletic Director Josh Brooks shared a similar statement as well.

Changes could be coming to Georgia's non-conference schedules

Georgia is known for always scheduling difficult non-conference opponents. They always have Georgia Tech as their season finale and typically have a big name power four school opponent to start the season. This year it was Clemson, but in year's past they have also played teams like Oregon and Notre Dame. But knowing how difficult Georgia's schedule will always be in the SEC, maybe these difficult non-conference games aren't needed.

The College Football Playoff committee made it clear all season that playing a difficult schedule does not matter. They made it clear that a team will be rewarded for beating up on a lot of bad teams instead of challenging themselves throughout the season. That's why Ole Miss and Alabama were outside of the 12-team field in place of SMU, who did have one less loss.

So now Georgia has a decision to make, because their upcoming non-conference schedules are intense. Next year the only power four non-conference opponent Georgia will face is Georgia Tech, but after next year UGA has upcoming matchups with Louisville, Florida State, Clemson, Ohio State and NC State. Just look at the schedule for 2030 as an example, Georgia plays Ohio State, Clemson and Georgia Tech in the non-conference on top of their difficult SEC schedule they'll receive as well. Is it even worth playing that many great teams knowing the CFP committee won't care about their strength of schedule?

It seems like Brooks does not think so.

We will have to wait and see if Georgia gets rid of any of these upcoming games or not, but it may not be a bad idea for UGA to ditch these non-conference power four opponents and play three cupcakes along with Georgia Tech every season.