Is Georgia Trying to Convince the SEC to Move the South Carolina-Georgia Game to Later in the Season?

I do think that schedule balance has an effect on performance. Having to play several tough teams in a row can be rough. You need a cupcake game in there to give your stars a rest and regroup.

That has nothing to do with Georgia’s reasoning, though. There are various versions of the argument, but they think that it’s the earliness of the game that counts. Most of them say that it has something to do with our lack of depth. Others think it has something to do with our hopes still being high at the beginning of the year. Regardless, they think that we’re a poor November team but a great September team. The truth is that we play an unbalanced schedule that has historically allowed us to race out to a nice early-season record, only to lose games late when we play the toughest teams on our schedule in November. The team we field in September and November is the same—it’s the opponents that change. And it shouldn’t be surprising that our November record has changed as we’ve gotten better and the November opponents have gotten worse (Florida and Tennessee) or not kept up with our improvement (Clemson).

And the truth is, the scheduling imbalance is a good reason for this game to stay the way it is. We have a crappy enough schedule as it is. It’s not fair for the SEC to make it any more backloaded than it already is.

And for good reason, but a lot of years, like this year, it is the first SEC football game on CBS. Getting good coverage certainly should help with recruiting. TV is probably the main reason I would want to keep it. Although, most years the game would still be on CBS, I believe it’s almost guaranteed as it is now.

Most of the time, the UGA argument was that UGA would enjoy similarly large margins of victory if it played us late.

As for your other point, I don’t disagree. I get that it’s more important to us. I think I made that clear. But I also think it’s fair for the SEC to respect some of the things that are important to us.

The Georgia fans love their traditions. The privet hedges. Glory, Glory, Georgia . The WLOCP. The Auburn Game.

Among their favored traditions is contempt for USC. It’s not one of their trophy shelf traditions. It might not be “We stepped on their face with a hobnail boot” but it’s not far behind either. Georgia loves to disdain us. We’re a chore. A game to get past to get to the good stuff. Losing to USC is like getting stuck on the Poor Farm in the Game of Life. Giving up the contempt would require an almost existential change in world view. And that ain’t gonna happen.

I love the power of contempt, however. We want the game more badly than they do. And all things being equal (and the squads are very similar now – except for UGA’s outrageous lead in media coverage of course), that is going to give us an advantage.

sentiment much like that of clemsux, those that live in the was. Yes we are fully aware of our history but we also try to live in the present. This clown seems to forget that the national title they own is due in large part to big George coughing it up while we were driving it down their throats to win the game. Oh yeah, that was 1981. While we are building a solid program and tradition, what has uga done recently except lose to us two years in a row, starting to look like a trend. Go MSU!

I like playing the game early because it is a barometer of how our season goes. But another part of me says let the entitled have their way and we will win regardless. Accept what the SEC hands down, with reason of course, and play it where it lies. We will win in Columbia next year regardless of when the game is played.

Go Cocks!

though I don’t disrespect FisheriesDawg’s take that, by UGA standards, 20 years barely registers on the radar. The late, great Larry Munson called games from 1966 to 2008 – 42 years – and that is just the modern epoch of Dawg football.

I will need to go back and double-check, but in the early days of the 12 team SEC, in the early and mid-1990s, we played UGA right out of the gate – opening weekend, without any cupcake or tune-up game. My recollection is that UGA used it’s clout to put a stop to that, but that the league couldn’t (or wouldn’t) move the game deeper into the season.

Either way, as long as most of the current Gamecock and Bulldog players have been alive, it’s been one of the early season match-ups, and there’s no real reason to change it IMHO.

In any event, to placate the sensibilities of our traditional-minded friends from the Peach State, I would note that the Cocks first played UGA in 1894; in the modern era, if my calculations are correct (!) we have only failed to play them 7 times since 1958.

True, UGA has had the whip hand in the series, but we’ve fought and clawed, and one more than a handful too.