It's come to the attention of Bulldog Nation that some of you, particularly those of the Gamecock persuasion, are a little bit miffed at how the SEC reshuffled its 2012 football schedules to account for the additions of Texas A&M and Missouri. Specifically, you're up in arms about how a road date with Alabama was taken off Georgia's 2012 slate to make room for a game at Mizzou, welcoming the Tigers to their new conference.
Your concerns have been noted, and our recommended course of action is for you to -- how to put this politely? -- suck it up and stop acting like such whiny babies. Or Georgia Tech fans.
Did Georgia catch a break in trading Alabama for Missouri? It's hardly unreasonable to say that we did. But I don't recall the Dawgs getting a whole lot of sympathy from anyone in the SEC in 2008, when we had to play Alabama and LSU, in addition to our annual neutral-site date with Florida. Or in 2009, when we had Oklahoma State and Arizona State on our non-conference slate and played only one game all season against a non-BCS-conference program (in addition to drawing Arkansas and LSU out of the West). Or in 2010, when we got an opening-week tune-up but then had to face three of our next four opponents on the road.
So Georgia gets to avoid playing Alabama and LSU next year; South Carolina got the same break in 2011. This stuff is cyclical, folks, and it just shakes out like that sometimes. Right now Gamecock fans, just to give one example, are frustrated that their permanent opponent from the West is an Arkansas program that's surging under Bobby Petrino. In 2004 and '05, though, Arkansas had a pair of losing records while Georgia's permanent West opponent, Auburn, went 22-3 and won an SEC title.
And keep in mind this scheduling "format," to the extent that it even qualifies as such, is just a one-year stopgap. There's no telling what the schedules will look like in 2013 or beyond now that A&M and Mizzou are official members of the fold, much less how we'll be gauging those schedules a decade from now. Consider that when the SEC's current scheduling format was implemented in 2003, Ole Miss was a perennial bowl team while Alabama was a basket case of a program.
At any rate, it's not like Bama and LSU have been left off our 2012 schedule completely. I mean, we're gonna face one of those teams in the SEC Championship Game, right? We'll let y'all know how that goes.