Prepare Your Tailgates Accordingly

By this point you probably have Georgia’s 2009 schedule roughly memorized. You know we open in Oklahoma, get a night game at home against South Carolina, play Florida in late October, as usual, and end on the road at Tech. But part of the intrigue of every season is how the SEC schedule as a whole plays out. It always happens that there are just a few weekends of incredible football.

I’ll never forget the weekend of my freshman year that we played Auburn at home. Not only was it my first night game experience in Sanford Stadium (and the most crushing Georgia loss to date for me personally), the day was full of great pigskin. After watching College Gameday in my dorm room at Russell Hall we worked our way to a tailgate on North Campus where we watched Spurrier beat his old Gators in his first season back in the SEC. Then we headed toward the stadium but made a two-hour stop in Tate where we watched Bama’s dream season (the Shula one) crash with a loss to LSU alongside hundreds of other Dawgs packed into Georgia Hall. And then of course our game with Auburn, despite its results, capped the night with more great football. I just remember feeling all day that if I wasn’t in front of a TV I might miss the highlight of the SEC season. Every season produces just a few of those great Fall Saturdays.

Here is a quick look at the highlights of each week on the SEC schedule and a few guesses as to which weekends might keep you glued to the TV for unsafe amounts of time.

Week 1 (Sept 5th): After Carolina kicks off the season with their “we are clearly a second-tier program” Thursday night game the Dawgs headline the weekend with their trip to Stillwater. But get ready to stay on the couch after the Dawgs play to watch Bama and Virginia Tech in the Dome. And if you aren’t worn out by that point you can watch LSU destroy Washington out on the West Coast while you doze off, happy as a clam that football is back.

Week 2 (Sept 12): This marks the first weekend of conference play and our game against the Gamecocks probably headlines the trio of conference games. Auburn and Mississippi State also clash that day with the lofty goal of scoring 10 cumulative points this year and LSU welcomes Vanderbilt to Death Valley. The highlight of the day though is probably UCLA visiting Smarty Pants Kiffin in Knoxville. Last year a loss to UCLA was the beginning of the end for Fulmer. It will be interesting to see the influence of the game this year.

Week 3 (Sept 19): Like most years, the highlight of Week 3 will be Florida-Tennessee. This game will be a rarity in that it probably won’t be competitive after the first quarter, but it will still be worth watching. The collision of Kiffin and Meyer’s egos should be entertaining. The only other SEC games that week are Miss State at Vandy and our game out in Arkansas. Auburn also hosts West Virginia in the second part of a home-and-home that looked so good when it was scheduled and probably hurts both of their strengths of schedule now.

Week 4 (Sept 26): The most interesting SEC game this week might be the Thursday night game, South Carolina hosting Ole Miss in their first real test of the year. Other SEC matchups for the weekend include Arkansas welcoming Bama to Fayetteville, Florida at Kentucky and LSU traveling to Miss State. Though its not the most compelling lineup of the season the Dawgs may benefit be getting a great TV spot that week for their game against Arizona State.

Week 5 (Oct 3): In what will become a bit of a trend by this point in the season the Dawgs will be in one the games to watch this week as they host LSU in Athens. And like many years the schedule works out that pretenders and contenders will probably be exposed early on in the month of October. Tennessee and Auburn face off to see which program is rebuilding worse. Bama goes to Kentucky and Vandy visits Ole Miss. This week also has two interesting out of conference games as Miss State welcomes the Rambling Wreck to Starkville and Arkansas takes on Texas A&M in the new Jerry Jones Football Palace.

Week 6 (Oct 10):This will undoubtedly be the best football weekend to date in the 2009 season and maybe the best that we get all year. The West may be

Geaux Tigers!!

decided this day as Bama visits Oxford to take on Ole Miss. Auburn and Arkansas also face off and LSU can make or break their season with what has become a great annual game against the Gators (in Baton Rouge this year). And on top of all that we head to Knoxville to avenge the 2007 loss and make our tour stop on the “Lane Kiffin, How You Like Me Now?” Tour. Having no idea what TV slot we will claim that week its just safe to say this will be a looong, great day on the couch.

Week 7 (Oct 17): With the exception of the Georgia-Vandy game this weekend is full of cross-division matchups that we don’t get to see all that often. Arkansas heads west to play at Florida, Carolina heads West to play at Bama and Auburn heads North to play at Kentucky. The rare matchups are about the only storyline though as every other team is off or playing out of conference cupcakes after the SEC cage match that happened the previous weekend.

Week 8 (Oct 24): Being the Dawgs one off weekend of the season many Georgia fans will face the tough decision of taking a weekend off of football altogether or simply saddle up to enjoy the rest of the conference without the stress of your own team playing. A pretty stacked SEC slate will probably draw me back to the couch: Bama heads up to Knoxville, Arkansas goes to Ole Miss, Auburn heads to LSU, Florida goes to Miss State (if Florida is upset by them one more time the NCAA really ought to investigate), and Vandy goes to South Carolina to see if they can make it three in a row over the Chickens. The games aren’t spectacular but five inter-conference matchups should provide some entertainment.

After this weekend Kiffin will explain that losses to Florida, Georgia and Bama all bring good publicity to the program.

Week 9 (Oct 31): This is the one Saturday every season that the rest of the SEC schedule is irrelevant. You’ll spend the whole day in Jacksonville traffic or tailgating or in the stadium praying for miracles to happen. But here is what you’ll miss: Ole Miss at Auburn, Miss State at Kentucky, and South Carolin at UT. Maybe we can catch some of Spurrier visiting Neyland Stadium on Halloween Night after the Dawgs play- that sounds pretty entertaining.

Week 10 (Nov 7): The highlight of the week will almost certainly be LSU visiting Bama. One of them will surely still be in the hunt for the West title at this point and the game has become an annual thriller. But in a weekend where the Dawgs only have Tennessee Tech there isn’t much else to watch. Arkansas comes to Carolina an Vandy goes to Florida while Auburn, Ole Miss, Kentucky and Tennessee follow suit with Georgia in playing cupcakes before a brutal last three weeks.

Remember the last time Auburn came to Athens? Yeah. Me too.

Week 11 (Nov 14): Auburn comes back to Athens this weekend in what is usually one of the better football weekend of the fall (going for 4 straight wins this year!). Tennessee will make a rare visit to Oxford to play Ole Miss (a great opportunity for a surprise win for Kiffin), Bama goes to Miss State, Florida goes to South Carolina in a game that was fun to watch in Spurrier’s first few years, but has gotten quite lopsided lately and Vandy and Kentucky battle it out to see who is this year’s Eastern Conference whipping boy (unless we’re lucky enough to see Tennessee claim that position).

Week 12 (Nov 21): LSU will head to Oxford this week to try to avenge a loss in Death Valley from last year. If Bama under-performs this year this game could decide the West. Arkansas and Miss State face off, Vandy tries yet again to finagle a win from Tennessee, and Kentucky visits Athens as everyone preps for the rivalry week to follow. As is the case many years, though these games don’t look huge division titles will probably be won this day or teams will at least be eliminated from contention with only one game remaining and a few SEC teams playing their rivalry games out of conference.

Week 13 (Nov 28): In all honesty, can you imagine Thanksgiving weekend with football? I choose not to. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday and I have a feeling that its strong ties to football have a lot to do with that. The Dawgs will obviously head to Atlanta to see make sure Tech doesn’t start putting together a little win streak. Auburn and Bama clash as always, but this year CBS has put that game on Friday, which I am thrilled about. The more we can spread good football out that weekend the better. Arkansas and LSU face off in Baton Rouge. The Egg Bowl will take place in Starkville this year. And Tennessee and Kentucky face off in the rivalry game that provides the most yawns from the rest of the conference. Out of conference Florida and South Carolina join the Dawgs in taking on their in-state ACC counterparts. Hopefully Georgia and Carolina won’t embarrass the conference again this year.

So there’s your breakdown. I think there is little doubt that the weekend that includes Georgia-Tennessee, Florida-LSU and Ole Miss-Bama is your headliner going into the season. But as always, we’ll have to see what develops. On the whole it’s not the most compelling year we’ve witnessed in the SEC. There may be a shortage of great teams and the abundance of average ones shows itself in the scheduling. The positive though is that there are games worth watching literally every week… As if you might not watch them anyway.