This is so Georgia Way.
… McGarity said Georgia and Auburn simply made a sacrifice in 2012 for the good of the league, and it’s not one they can just take back.
“When Missouri and Texas A&M joined the conference, three schools had to move some traditional dates in order to make the schedules work,” McGarity told reporters. “Auburn and Georgia were two of those schools. It was to make the 6-1-1 work. If we hadn’t done that, a bunch of other schools, many more than three would have had to make all kinds of changes. To undo it now, again, you’d need a much larger [group] of teams make changes, many more than three.
“So it’s one of those things where it might not have been the best for Georgia, but it was best for the conference.”
It was too much like work for the conference, so McGarity just said, “screw it, we’ll take the hit”. If there were no quid pro quo for that, it was a stupidly noble gesture. (The only thing more depressing would be if it turned out there was a quid pro quo that nobody can talk about years later.)
The topper is ignoring your successful head coach’s wishes now because it’s still too much trouble for the league office to fix a mess of its own making.
A man who’s willing to go out and fight for his football program like that deserves all the contract extension he can get, amirite?
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UPDATE: If you don’t subscribe to The Athletic, it’s a shame you can’t read Seth Emerson’s piece today on this subject. It’s a pay site, so I’m not going to excerpt from it, except to note that Seth asked Mark Womack, the man responsible for football scheduling for the SEC, if there was indeed a quid pro quo for Georgia’s sacrifice. Seth’s pithy summary of Womack’s response: “So, essentially, Georgia’s reward was the thanks of a grateful conference.”
Consider the cockles of my heart warmed.
While having two back to back home games against Auburn is what should happen… why don’t we just switch with Tech? With our record at Bobby Dodd, and their love for hosting our fan base’s wallets… why not schedule back to back at Mark Richt Field?
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I know all the reasons why we don’t do it guys, so you don’t have to @ me here, just making a joke.
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The only way to fix this is through expansion….
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Who says they’ll fix it then?
These people could screw up the plans for a one-car funeral… and as long as the money kept rolling in, they wouldn’t give a shit, either.
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Senator, you stole one of my sayings!!…
as an undertaker, it takes a great deal of effort on the dumbass level to screw up a one-car funeral.
Rock on!!
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I am one of the biggest McGarity haters out there, and the guy makes my skin crawl, but I am really not sure what he was/is supposed to do here? It was a matter of flipping 5 divisional games, or 1, so it should be no surprise to anyone how it played out.
I would also challenge you to build a 14-team with 2 division schedule with a 6-1-1 model that results in each team having an equal number of home and away games each year, both intra and inter-division, and having one of those inter-divisional games being off-sync from the others…
Going to 9 conference games on a 6-1-2 model creates a lot more scheduling flexibility, which is the ONLY way this problem will be solved. And if McGarity were smart, he would link up with Saban and suggest this, particularly when he sees how crappy the crowds are for our three Little Sisters of the Poor games this season…
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First of all, this all goes back to how poorly thought out the last round of SEC expansion went. Slive so desperately wanted out of a bad TV deal that he grabbed two teams first and he and his presidents asked questions later. We’re still living with the consequences of that.
As far as your defense of McGarity goes, unless you’re saying it’s literally impossible to construct a schedule that would have avoided the inconvenience done to Georgia and Auburn — and note that even McGarity doesn’t go that far — then we’re back to the question of how hard do you fight for your program.
It doesn’t matter how smart McGarity is, if he’s not willing to put the work in.
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I don’t think it was so much out of a bad deal, as making a better deal. Grabbing one of the two biggest Texas program is a big get, and yes it was poorly thought out. They didn’t know for sure if they could get another or at what cost getting another program to even the conference out would cost.
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It is literally mathematically impossible to construct a consistent, repeatable 6-1-1 schedule where each team has 4 home and 4 away when one permanent series is out of sync with the rest.
Our quid pro quo was keeping the Auburn series an annual affair.
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You must know more than Mark Womack does, then. Because he doesn’t acknowledge either of your statements.
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Expansion is indeed the root of this evil, but you won’t find me defending it either – it was poorly thought out, not well-planned and rushed; it was simply expansion for expansion’s sake. Everybody is so worried about their conference being the “biggest”, “richest” and “best” so they can pound their chest about it… While McGarity certainly played some role in the conference expansion, blaming him for that, and all its ills, is unfair too.
I’m no mathematician (I did all my work on North Campus), and I don’t really have the time to do it myself, but if it is mathematically possible, it would be extremely difficult to do so.
For now, consider that had we played Auburn at home last year, we would have had 5 home games (SCar, Kentucky, Missouri, Auburn, Miss State) and 3 away (Tenn, Van, Florida). To “even things out”, easiest thing to do is give up Miss State and play in Starkvegas – but that gives Miss State 5 home games and 3 away. So they have to give up their home game with Kentucky (which I think is their permanent rival), but this also means them playing in Lexington in back to back years (which they probably aren’t gonna like and their message boards are gonna be bitching like this one). So Kentucky has to give up its home game with whoever their rotating West team was, which is now in the same spot as Miss State, etc. ad nauseum. And sooner or later, instead of 2 teams having to change their schedules, all 14 have, and instead of 1 team playing away 2 years in a row, 6 are.
As long at they keep the 6-1-1 format and every team has 3 divisional home games and 1 cross-divisional home game, the simplest and easiest thing to do is have the cross-divisional games “sync”, which is what they did.
Again, I am not saying it is good, but it is what it is and it is not changing until the conference schedule expands or the conference expands again.
And as for us not getting any “kudos” from the league office, McGarity did not have much of a choice: it was either go along with it, or put up a fight and make them vote on it and get outvoted 12-2. Bitching and whining about it in a vacuum isn’t gonna get us anywhere though…
I’m going to go shower now, because it makes me ill to defend McGarity like this, but there was really nothing else to do…
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This is a great example of why it doesn’t work and the schedules had to flip.
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I’m not often one who takes up for the AD, but consider this:
In return, Georgia got one of the best home games (LSU) in recent history before injuries destroyed the season. Auburn got an SEC championship, 11 more years of Gus, and an untold number of years of biannual whining from its fanbase about the schedule and being in the ‘wrong’ division.
I’ll call it a wash.
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Why can we not just play Auburn at home two years in a row?
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I think it would throw off how many Home away SEC games we have….maybe for both teams….5 away and 3 home for both every year…that’s my take anyways…as others have said, not so simple.
Is my take wrong? 79 seemed to address it above.
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5 away and 3 home every other year….
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Take one more hit…and solve the problem ? What would happen if we played Tech in Atlanta two years in a row?
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Why would Georgia give up another home gate?
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McGarity’s gonna McGarity -or- Georgia Way will Georgia Way.
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Play the tech game at the Benz to open a season. Then continue as normal. It’s so simple, it’ll never happen.
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To fix the straight garbage that is our home schedule every other year.
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Or just drop em. 🙂
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I kid, I kid…
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I would like that, but Tech had the problem we do now before they played at Clemson back to back in 2012 and 2013. The ACC had to switch them for the same math reasons Auburn had to switch. Now, Tech hosts UGA and Clemson in alternating years. Since those are their two biggest games, they’re not going to want to switch.
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Yup, okay, I’m off the fence, fire his ass.
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The thing that kills me here is that it isn’t JUST Georgia that wants this. Auburn wants it, too. They’re not having any more fun closing the year on the road at Georgia and at Alabama than we are closing next year at Auburn and at Tech. I’m used to Georgia doing the pushover thing for a pat on the head from the SEC, but Auburn?
Georgia needs an athletic director that will take care of Georgia first and the other 13 schools second. I get that being in a conference requires that we look out for the interests of the conference, too, but not at the expense of our own interests. We took our hit. Now it’s time for someone to make us whole again.
Failing relief from the SEC, we need to work something out with Georgia Tech. They wanted to get Clemson and UGA on opposite years of their home schedule and I’m sure that they’d still be interested in doing that. I’m sure that they aren’t going to want to visit Athens twice in a row, though, and despite the pleasure of a guaranteed road win I’m sure Georgia isn’t going there twice, either. Put the game in the Benz for one year and flip flop the series. Something has to be done to prop up the odd-year home schedule.
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Fixing our end with Tech does not fix Auburn. Flipping UGA Auburn as I understand it created a problem with the home/away rotation with the SEC cross division games. It isn’t a simple one game problem. We need the SEC to get together and look at all the rotation, a couple of schools may need to be flipped. If you think it is easy remember the UF/LSU scheduling crisis. Could you see the SEC trying to get Auburn and Bama to flip the Iron Bowl rotation?
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The good part about fixing this with Tech is that Auburn is still screwed. I like that option the best!
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The most McGarity thing ever would be to give GT 2 home games, just for the SEC to flip the Auburn UGA again, and be back in the same spot.
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Jellyfish insult one another by saying they are spineless as Greg McGarity.
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If we ever flip a bunch of these games, I pray that they switch up the UT/Vandy rotation. Those could be fun annual games, but when they’re both in the state of TN on back to back weekends, it makes it impossible to do.
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Agree, I see that as worse than the AU/GT games being home or away every year….
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We can fix the issue eventually ……….but the fact remains that GM got nothing in return. The Georgia Way.
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Yeah, McG is kind of a weasel, I think if he were a big weasel he would have gotten the conference to pay us more money in exchange for the home scheduling sucking ass.
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Some of the calculus may have been the preservation of permanent cross division rivals with Auburn. There are multiple opponents of this structure in the league and really only Bama/UT and GA/AU support with Florida saying they want LSU every year but LSU being the most vocal against the arrangement. Other schools probably don’t give a damn and the boat stays afloat. Ask them to rearrange schedules and lose home games and they might not be so supportive.
Doubt this crossed McGarity’s mind though.
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Didn’t all of this happen around the same time Alleva was making noise about the permanent East opponent for LSU? The political intrigue may have been that he had 10 schools in favor of dropping the permanent cross-division game with the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry and the 3rd Saturday in October going the way of Oklahoma/Nebraska. In that scenario, McGarity would have had to throw us on the sword to keep the rivalry. He had to know losing Auburn as a yearly game would have been the kiss of death for him.
Another reason the admission of Missouri to the SEC was a terribly handled move.
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“McGarity said Georgia and Auburn simply made a sacrifice in 2012 for the good of the league…”
Uh, no Greg. Georgia made the sacrifice. Auburn got a bonus by getting to play Georgia at home back to back years.
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…or an AD that does not get in the way while Kirby makes comments on the schedule and pushes the direction of facilities improvement and staff salaries.
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I just don’t see how a do-nothing-unless-forced-to guy like Greg Mediocrity and a proactive, detailed-oriented HC like Kirby are going to coexist. I guess Greg has managed to keep Kirby placated, or at least stayed out of his way, so far. But in the long run I’m thinking Kirby is going to want someone more reliable and proactive.
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Why don’t we just schedule an extra game with Auburn in MBS, kick their ass, and call it even?
Wait…
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yea. McEars strikes again. do it for the good of the conference…sheesh.
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exactly georgia way. keep the checks coming and dont rock the boat.
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