With the discussion generated by Michael Elkon’s post on Georgia’s scheduling, I thought I’d take a look at one final item – travel.
Not that I think it’s that big a deal overall in determining a school’s strength of schedule, but when’s the last time each SEC school went outside of the Confederacy to play a regular season road game against a school from another major/BCS conference?
Here’s the list:
- Alabama: 2002 (Oklahoma)
- Arkansas: 2005 (Southern Cal)
- Arkansas: 2002 (Southern Cal)
- Florida: 1991 (Syracuse)
- Georgia: 1965 (Michigan)
- Kentucky: 2005 (Indiana)
- LSU: 2005 (Arizona State)
- Mississippi: 2006 (Missouri)
- Mississippi State: 2007 (W. Virginia)
- South Carolina: 1991 (W. Virginia)*
- Tennessee: 2007 (Cal)
- Vanderbilt: 2006 (Michigan)
*not a member of the SEC that year
Yeah, that 42+ year thing kinda jumps out at you. The good news is that the streak will end in ’08, as the Dawgs are one of three SEC teams leaving the friendly confines of the South to play schools from other BCS conferences (Auburn and Tennessee are the others). That will leave Florida and South Carolina (which has never played outside of the South as a member of the SEC) at the top of the leader board.
One other thing: the SEC’s record in those games is 2-10. The only two winners were Georgia and LSU.
Get The Picture 
Mr. Senator,
I’m going off of pure “hear-say” but hasn’t Damon Evans attempted to schedule games with Oklahoma and Michigan?
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The scuttlebutt is that Damon has looked for home and away series with a number of schools. And don’t forget he actually had something lined up with Oregon State that OSU backed out of.
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I simply do not get it. I don’t get why guys like Elkon want to point to this, as if UGA is afraid to play anyone. BS. I don’t think our coaches will say, well our schedule was too tough that’s why we couldn’t get it done…so Mike will you be the first reporter at the post game press conference to say “well Coach Richt had you traveled outside the Southeast to play games against big name opponents in the last 42 years you might have made it through this schedule”. That last statement makes no sense, just like Elkon’s argument. Hey Mike why don’t you interview Damon Evans and ask him about trying to schedule distant big name opponents, or Coach Dooley. Oh that’s right your not interested in why’s but simply throwing rocks and running.
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I don’t know about Oklahoma, but I believe the ABH reported about two years ago (Kyle noted it in his blog) that we tried to schedule UM and Notre Dame, and neither returned Damon’s calls.
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Thanks Senator.
That’s the point I was trying to make. We have tried to schedule other BCS schools outside the southeast and, for whatever reason, it hasn’t worked out.
Charley,
I got Oklahoma from an article written a year or so ago in which Damon used them as an example of quality teams he wanted to schedule. I don’t know that Oklahoma was ever contacted.
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I hate to admit it, but Tech has to count for a game against a school from a decent conference.
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Tech is inside the Confederacy.
The BCS surely won’t schedule any decent intersectional games, ala UGA-Hawaii and USC-Illinois instead of UGA-USC. If we want interesting games like this, the schools will have to schedule them themselves.
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