The SEC has a major scheduling problem on their hands, and Georgia is the perfect example of everything that's wrong with it.
This has nothing to do with the nine game conference schedule that allows every team to play each conference member at least two times every four years, that decision was actually brilliant. Instead the SEC has a problem with awarding night games to matchups that have no business being played at night.
Georgia just found out that their week seven matchup against Auburn will begin at 3:30 pm EST. This is their fifth home game of the season and they are yet to play at night, and this is also the second home game in a row where they may have deserved the night slot over the games that were selected.
The two night games in week seven are Arkansas at Vanderbilt and Kentucky at Oklahoma. Those are four unranked teams somehow all playing at night while Georgia and Auburn, who have one of the most historic rivalries in the conference, are stuck playing in the afternoon. There are also four SEC matchups featuring two ranked teams this same weekend as well that didn't get put in the night slot either.
Week five is another example of the SEC having a terrible night slate. They had Kentucky at South Carolina and Arkansas at Texas A&M at night instead of allowing Georgia, who hosted Vanderbilt, or two other ranked matchups have the night slots.
The SEC continues to drop the ball with their game times, and they as a conference can only blame themselves. If they stopped one outdated offseason procedure then teams like Georgia wouldn't suffer the consequences of being continuously passed over for the night slot for mediocre games.
SEC sets potential game times months before the season begins
For some reason the SEC starts reserving game times months in advance. Every offseason in the beginning of the summer they go through the schedule and assign every game each weekend to the early afternoon, late afternoon or night window. That works out okay for the first couple weeks, but it makes no sense to decide when games will be beyond that point.
No one knows which teams will be good and which will be bad by the halfway point of the season. There aren't many fans that could've predicted teams like Mississippi State or Florida would be having the seasons they're having, so it makes no sense to assign game times months in advance when there will inevitably be a few surprise teams in the league like there are every season.
Instead the SEC tries to predict months in advance which games will be good when instead they could just wait until a few weeks out to decide which games should be played at night.
Had the SEC waited to decide when games will be played they probably wouldn't have Florida and Texas kicking off at noon in week seven at the exact same time Mississippi State and LSU will play. They also wouldn't have decided that Auburn at Georgia, Alabama at Tennessee and Missouri at Ole Miss will all begin at the same time either.
Instead SEC fans are stuck with all the best games beginning at the same time and two games that essentially no once cares about beginning at night.
Georgia may not get a home game this year
Every team deserves a chance to host one home night game a season. Even the bad teams like Arkansas and Vanderbilt deserve to play under the lights once each year, but the SEC should save those team's one night game for when the conference doesn't have many big games one week.
Instead the SEC assigns every game to a specific window in the summer which has led to Georgia potentially not getting a single home night game at all this season.
Night games should be reserved for the biggest games of the weekend. Games like Georgia and Alabama are the matchups that should be at night every weekend, but instead SEC fans have had to watch LSU play an FCS team at night and two unranked matchups steal the night slots from four ranked games.
All the SEC needs to do is not lock every game into a specific window in the summer. Let the season unfold and decide a week or two out when each game is played. Reward the teams that are having good seasons by letting them play at night, and the teams that are at the bottom of the conference should play at noon until they earn the right to play under the lights.
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