Auburn's biggest rivalries named two of most important SEC rivalries to maintain after expansion
2023 will mark the final season for several major things in college football.
It will be the final season Texas and Oklahoma play in the Big 12 before they join the SEC. It will also be the final season of the four-team playoff, which will expand to 12 teams in 2024.
Oh, and UCLA and USC are moving to the Big 10 after this season, too.
There's going to be a lot of moving and shaking happening in the sport over the next decade, and with the SEC expanding to 16 teams, there's going to be a significant change to the schedule - most likely being a shift from an eight-game schedule to a 3-6-6 model, with three permanent opponents for every school, as well as six rotating opponents and three non-conference games.]
With three permanent opponents being chosen for each team, there's going to have to be some sacrifices made in order to preserve some rivalries.
According to Will Blackus of 247 Sports, there are eight rivalries that the SEC that need to be protected once Texas and OU make the move to join the conference in 2024.
Two of them, obviously, are Auburn's two biggest games of the season.
Auburn vs Georgia and Auburn vs Alabama have to be protected in this expansion and new schedule. Making these two games an every other season ordeal would be extremely unhealthy for the conference and college football as a whole.
Blakus agrees.
"This is called the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry for a reason," Blakus wrote in his article. "In fact, Auburn-Georgia can contend for the title of South’s Oldest Rivalry, which is currently held by North Carolina and Virginia. Both sets of rivals have met 127 times throughout their respective histories, which ties for the second-most among all rivalries nationally. Georgia has won nine of the past 10, so some may forget how exciting this showdown can be, but the two teams traded blows prior to the start of the 2010s. Maybe new Tigers coach Hugh Freeze can inject some heat back into this one."
While it has been a series dominated by Georgia as of late, this is still one of the better rivalries in college sports.
It's certainly comparable to the Tigers' game vs their in-state archrival.
"The Iron Bowl has more memorable moments throughout its history than most rivalries," Blakus wrote. "Every college football fan, from casual to hardcore, knows of the Kick 6, when Auburn’s Chris Davis caught a short Alabama field goal on the last play of the game and housed it from 109 yards away in 2013 to snap a two-game Alabama winning streak. In 2019, Alabama missed a field goal late in the fourth quarter and then handed Auburn a fourth-down conversion thanks to a costly penalty, as the Tigers won 48-45. The loss that year also eliminated Alabama from playoff contention for the first time since its inception in 2014."
It seems unlikely that the league wouldn't make Alabama and Georgia two of Auburn's three permanent opponents in a nine-game conference schedule, but it would be foolish if they chose to.
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