Greg McGarity is frustrated about Georgia’s scheduling. No, really.
“You just try to do the best you can,” he said on 680 AM The Fan. “You’re getting hit from all sides. You’re getting hit from fans. I know the coaches want to produce wins. You’ve got so many dynamics at work there. It’s just impossible to make everyone happy.”
Impossible? Hardly. A good place to start would be with a reset of the schedule with Auburn.
Start with the Auburn series. If the Tigers were visiting Sanford Stadium this year, it wouldn’t by itself make this year’s home schedule a great one. But it would help.
When Georgia agreed to the Auburn switch, it meant that every year it would have three prime opponents (Auburn, Tennessee and Georgia Tech) either all at home or all on the road. That means one year three stellar opponents at home. The next year? Maybe none.
There have been no indications that Georgia, Auburn and the SEC have discussed having the Tigers visit a second straight year to put the annual meeting back on schedule. UGA athletics director Greg McGarity has not responded to an email asking that question.
Maybe he’s too busy contemplating the next chapter of “The Final Word”.
Get The Picture 
I’m sure a lot of fans would love them to fix the scheduling with Auburn, which probably means it will never happen.
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The Auburn fox should be easy, but then again, I never understood why the change had to be made in the first place.
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Auburn fix
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See below, ‘Auburn fox’ seems more appropriate.
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It did the same thing to AU…put UGA and Bama either both home or both away every year, I believe….I don’t get it…
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That’s right … it truly never made any sense to me. Maybe The Georgia Way can give us the First Word on this. 🙂
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It was changed because of the SEC’s 6-1-1 scheduling. When the SEC was 5-1-2, it didn’t matter if permanent inter-divisional rivals were on different home schedules because there were two rotating opponents to make it work. With the 6-1-1 schedule, all permanent inter-divisional opponents have to be played in the East the same year and the West the other year. If, as an example, Auburn was in Athens every odd year and Alabama hosted Tennessee every odd year, we could never set up a known rotating schedule where Alabama would rotate onto our schedule (while maintaining the 4 home, 4 away schedule). That didn’t matter during the first few years of the 14 team SEC because schedules were just pulled out of the ether, but if we want a known, predictable rotation out into the future, Auburn HAD to switch (it and one other West permanent tram were on a different rotation from the rest of the division).
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Thanks – another effect of not very intelligently considered expansion. We were the only school affected by the decision and received zero benefit of the change both long-term and short-term
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Yeah. We also can’t use arch to fix it by switching years. They used to have the same problem we do now with us and Clemson on the same rotation. However, after the ACC went to 14, Clemson switched years like Auburn did for us. So I doubt Tech would help us out.
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It looks to me like Auburn used UGA to even out and enhance their schedule. On odd years they now have Ole Miss, Ms State, UGA, and Bama. On even years they have LSU, A&M, and Arkansas. I hope Auburn and the SEC at least offered McGarity a cigarette afterwards.
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LMAO!
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Auburn fans hate the new schedule too because they get both Bama and UGA at home one year and both on the road the next.
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Poor Auburn. At least they have at least 2 high profile home SEC games each year. Ole Miss and Arkansas at home every other year ain’t too bad either.
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Or at least leave some spare change on the nightstand
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Leave Jacksonville and fix Auburn.
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^This. Problem solved.
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It’s not complicated McG. There’s only two options. Play big P5 OOC games or play cupcakes. Perhaps that’s too big an idea for his brain. This is a Class A example of stupidity. I wonder how people get to these positions with this little intelligence in the first place.
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We already have one constant OOC Power 5 team, which of our rivals plays 2 every year?
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Damon Evans was scheduling an additional Power 5 opponent just about every year. Arizona State, Oklahoma State.. etc. His rationale was it expanded the Georgia Brand beyond our conference borders. Everyone was bitching that we were shooting ourselves in the foot by not scheduling more like UF and LSU were at the time… more cupcakes and that with an SEC schedule you didn’t need it to get to the Natty. McGarity delivered, now we’re all bitching how bad it is that we don’t play an additional P5 team year in and year out. I’m not saying I agree with one over the other, but it just goes to show that you can’t please everybody… but despite the change in philosophy we still don’t have a national championship, do we?
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Didn’t we add UCLA to a home/home in the near future? ND series will be a good one.
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If you consider 2024-25 the near future, then yes we did. Heyberto’s comment about scheduling is right on the mark.
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My problem with Damon Evans’ scheduling was he scheduled teams on the West Coast without an off week between that game and the next and often mid-season. The team would have to fly all night to get home and with the time change they effectively lost a day of practice for the next week’s game. That is fine if you are playing Kentucky but Evans did that the week before the UGA-Bama game in 2008–and we all know how that turned out. Those West Coast trips had a lot to do with screwing up the ’09 season and the ’10 season, too. It’s not just who you play it is also when and where you play ’em. That’s why the AD gets paid the big bucks. The problem is we now have had two ADs in a row who can’t find their respective asses with both hands who still got paid the big bucks.
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We either need to flip the Auburn series or the Tech series. Flipping the Tech rotation would make sense for the Jackets, too. They’ve wanted to do it for a long time so they could get Clemson one year and the Dawgs the next on their home slate.
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Not a bad idea but we shouldn’t go to Atlanta two years in a row unless one of the games is in Arthur’s place.
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Playing a game at the Blank Dome could be a fun one-off solution now that you mention it.
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Guys, watch it. The Georgia Way does not encourage common sense problem solving.
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Quit trying to divide us.
😉
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There’s nothing I can do. It’s just an impossible situation for me to deal with.
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I don’t even understand what the problem is. Everything seems fine to me.
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My boyfriend is just waiting on somebody to tell him what to do. Fixing this scheduling mess would require conversing, and negotiating with, 3 or 4 moving parts between AU, SEC, UF and Tech. Figuring out and solving complex problems was NOT in the $650,000 job description.
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“Good, better, best. Never let it rest. Until your good is better and your better is best”
Evidently Greg’s best isn’t quite what I think it should be just saying.
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I just want to know if McGoofy’s wife still wears Florida clothing when she’s jogging around Athens;-)
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“I know the coaches want to produce wins.” No, they don’t. They prefer you to buy them some cupcakes…with the fans’ dollars; many of whom don’t care how lousy those noon games are against FCS and bottom dwelling D1 teams. As the trend continues, just wait until you expect the Millenials to pick up the slack (pun intended) of spending more and getting less. You won’t need to pay an architect to develop plans on stadium expansion.
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Could somebody remind me why the Auburn schedule flipped in the first place?
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