Let all the Bulldog faithful rally behind the men who now wear the red and black with two words, two simple words which express the sentiments of the entire Bulldog Nation: Auburn Sucks.
Greg Sankey says “nay nay” to any games played on a Friday.
If would be very off-brand for the SEC to play on Friday nights…unless you’re Mississippi, where’s it’s totally fine.
Of course, it’s very off-brand for the SEC to defer to the B1G’s scheduling model, but I digress.
His logic is correct, though, Friday Nights are for high school football, and it is likely (don’t know because I haven’t lived outside the south) true that Fridays would get lower viewership for a Friday SEC tilt given that most of your red-blooded football fans are out watching a high school game.
In 1980, Packers kicker Chester Marcol’s field goal attempt is blocked back into his hands and he runs it in for a game-winning touchdown. As if this play wasn’t already awesome enough on its own, Marcol later revealed he was high on cocaine at the time. pic.twitter.com/kXHxZlUIXn
So today’s Musings is simple: what’s the Georgia version of the Immaculate Reception? Was it Belue to Scott? Bobo to Allen? Greene to Haynes? Stockton to Humphreys? Ohio State missing the kick? Ringo’s pick six?
2021 – Neutral Site victories, 4-1: Clemson at Charlotte (w), Georgia at TIAA Bank Field, Alabama at MBS (l), Michigan at Hard Rock (w), Alabama at Lucas Oil (w)
2022 – Neutral Site Victories, 5-0: Three at MBS, vs Oregon, LSU, and OSU, vs. Florida at TIAA Bank Field, and vs. TCU at SoFi Stadium
2023 – Neutral Sites, 2-1: Everbank vs. Florida (w), MBS (l) vs Alabama, Hard Rock vs. FSU (W)
2024 – Neutral Sites, 3-1: MBS vs. Clemson (w), Everbank vs. Florida (w), MBS vs. Texas (w), Caesars Superdome vs. Notre Dame (l)
2025: Neutral Sites, 3-1: Everbank vs. Florida (w), MBS x 2 vs. Tech and Alabama (w), Caesars Superdome vs. Ole Miss (loss)
17-4 at neutral sites, happy to say eight of them came against Tech, Alabama, and Florida.
Now, if we could just fix New Orleans, we’d be alright. Who knew going to the Sugar Bowl would be a curse, not a joy.
Maybe a neutral site game against FSU isn’t such a bad idea. Just come to MBS, boys.
“As we considered the effects of evolving scheduling mandates within both the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Southeastern Conference, we have mutually agreed that it is in the best interest of both schools to cancel our home-and-home series scheduled for 2027 and 2028,” Michael Alford, Florida State’s director of athletics, said in a statement. “We are now discussing playing a future neutral-site contest, and we are optimistic we will get that done. Importantly, this change will not reduce the total home games on our schedule moving forward.”
Prior to the cancellation, Georgia was staring down the barrel of playing 11 Power Four programs in those two seasons. The SEC announced in August of 2025 that it would be moving to nine-game league schedules. At the same time, it also stated that it would be requiring SEC teams to play at least one more Power 4 program in addition to the conference games.
No worries. After all, when the CFP expands to 64 teams, they’ll just trim the regular season down to ten games, all of which will be conference games. You can play your OOC games in the December Madness tournament. Don’t know about y’all, but I’d rather see Missouri added as a regular opponent on our schedule instead of Tech, or FSU, or Ohio State. Yes, that’s entertainment.
No, what is happening is the whittling down of an already expensive regular season, and using the expanded playoff structure to make you yearn for the chance to have a new visiting team come to your home turf. You’ll get the entertainment value of having someone like Notre Dame, or Utah, finally come to Athens, and you’ll pay top dollar for it thanks to Mickey and the CFP Committees.
That’s also just encouraging the bullshit that is selective scheduling in an era where the gap between haves and have nots is widening, despite people stating “there’s more parity in college football now because of NIL”, until you realize that drop from the sixth best team in the B1G to the remaining twelve in the conference is STEEP, while the same drop off doesn’t exist in the SEC. Meanwhile, smaller programs are starting to shed non-revenue boosting programs like baseball, all for the sake of keeping up with the arms race that is modern college football.
Sankey caved to this, as the head of what is arguably the most competitive and entertaining football conference in the country, to just allow more of this CFP security to exist in the B1G while the SEC beats the literal hell out of each other, and while I’m confident Kirby’s on the mother, I’m not sure the constant shape shifting of the sport of college football is something even the savviest of coaches can keep up with. Once you’ve gotten roster management down, you add NIL, a non-restricted portal, and now you have to do it all over again. Now you have schedule management on top of that. Then you have expanded tournaments,
#5 seed Georgia (10-0) versus #59 seed Florida State (4-6), shown here in a contest in Athens in the first round of the December Madness CFP Tournament brought to you by FanDuel. Photo Courtesy of BetMGM, December 1st, 2028.
If the driving thought was that Georgia didn’t need a strong 11 P4 games on their upcoming schedule and wanted to schedule a cupcake, instead, they need to revisit FSU’s recent success and realize it would’ve been a cupcake game. On top of that, while we’ll get the round robin of usual SEC teams in the future, we’ll likely never see another day like September 21st, 2019, and that’s a fucking crime.
I’ve been to a lot of games in Sanford in my days, and that day was unique. It was wholly different, a completely different visiting crowd and vibe. It was a long and pleasant tailgate, the games playing around the country were largely ignored during the day because of the magnitude of what was about to take place, and the palpable fresh buzz resonating around the usual buildings and streets and tents, like an electricity that had everyone moving in fast forward. It felt like we were about to witness something on the level of a Super Bowl but it somehow landed in our favorite place in the world.
The first time we saw the red lights.
Golden Domes between the hedges, blindingly bright, clean red jerseys versus white. It wasn’t high scoring, but it was exciting in a way that didn’t abate from kickoff to final whistle.
It was like the Thrilla in Manilla, but in Athens.
It was once in a lifetime, and I am infinitely grateful that I had the chance to be there.
Thank God they’ve got all those advanced analytics to squabble and argue over who is going to the 76th team to get into a tournament. I’m sure the team will go far, although in the expanded bracket you’ll have to go farther to get to the end, it seems.
In one sport, the rivalry games are becoming less significant.
In another, “Making the Tourney” is becoming less significant.
You know what’s not becoming less signficant?
To quote the great Robert Murtaugh, “I’m getting too old for this shit”.
Serious question…given the location, the hotbed of talent they can recruit from just like their counterparts in Tuscaloosa and Athens…the years of tradition and passionate fans…
Why does Auburn suck this bad? Granted, it couldn’t happen to a more deserving team, outside of Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, but looking at these couple of stats, it’s somewhat amazing that Auburn’s been this historically bad for this long.
Does anyone know what happened? Meddling big boosters? The Rise of Alabama in the 90s and 2000s? An Aztec curse?
The coaches have spoken: In a vote last week, the AFCA Board swung its support behind (1) a playoff with the max participants (likely 24); (2) discontinuing conference championships; and (3) ending CFP by second week of January, they tell @YahooSports.https://t.co/kZ2wlHmB3r
The most-discussed 24-team model is an all at-large field determined through the CFP rankings, with an automatic spot for the Group of Six leagues. The format adds one playoff round and 12 additional games. The top eight ranked teams would receive a first-round bye while seeds No. 9-24 play in the first round on campus.
Conference championship games would be eliminated and the playoff, presumably, would start immediately after the regular season — a long-discussed shift in the postseason calendar to open a path for the national title game, now played the third week of January, to return to the second Monday in the month.
To that end, coaches also recommended that the regular season should include one, not two, bye weeks and that the minimum number of days between games be six — moves that they believe will also help shift up the playoff calendar.
So who makes up this esteemed Board? Here you go:
Though the board has no authority within the NCAA or College Football Playoff governance structure, the group includes prominent coaching figures with influence over decision-makers, such as the conference commissioners and university presidents presiding over the CFP. The AFCA board includes names like Bret Bielema (Illinois), Brent Venables (Oklahoma), Clark Lea (Vanderbilt), Rhett Lashlee (SMU), Joey McGuire (Texas Tech) and Pat Fitzgerald (Michigan State).
Most likely, if it goes through, you’ll be back to determining a season conference champion rather than determining it in a championship game.
At least if it’s the last one, we finally took it to Alabama.
But I have to ask, doesn’t this feel oddly familiar? It seems like Georgia goes back to back to win a national championship, then get jobbed in the selection for the 2023 CFP, NIL and Portal goes wild, and the CFP is expanded. Now, we’ve gone back to back in the SECCG, so let’s move to get rid of it.
As a reminder, the SEC Conference Offices are in Birmingham, Alabama. I’ll go put my tin hat on and let y’all discuss.
