A Fan's Wish List for Future Georgia Opponents
The impending 12-team playoff will change the way every Power-5 team approaches scheduling. Strength of schedule will become a bigger deal as teams hope quality victories will help land them one of the last playoff spots.
Georgia Football is one program that was already leading the charge in strengthening schedules. The Bulldogs have deals to play eight different Power-5 schools over the next 13 seasons, including six games with the Clemson Tigers.
As a college football fan, this new scheduling philosophy is a dream come true. For years, matchups between the top college football programs were saved for bowl season and the neutral-site "kickoff" games. Now, Georgia has home-and-home series with Ohio State, Oklahoma and Texas on the horizon.
As these types of games become a necessity, Georgia will likely add even more Power-5 foes to its future schedules. Here's a short wish list of schools we would love to see Georgia host and travel to in the future:
USC Trojans
Georgia returns to Los Angeles to play UCLA in 2025, but no disrespect to the Bruins, but they're not the L.A. school most Georgia fans have on their wish list.
Southern California is one of the most successful programs in college football history with 11 national championships and 852 all-time victories. Six Heisman Trophy winners and 82 consensus All-American players sported USC colors.
USC also has a stadium fit for a program with such prestige. Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum has stood for almost 100 years. It has hosted numerous NFL franchises and two Super Bowls, including the first NFL vs. AFL Championship Game. The Los Angeles Dodgers called the stadium home from 1958-61 and won the World Series in 1959. The stadium even hosted Olympic events in 1932 and 1984.
Georgia has already played USC in the stadium three times (1931, 1933 and 1960) with the Trojans winning each time. But the Trojans haven't hosted the Bulldogs in 61 years and they've never traveled to Athens to play between the hedges.
Michigan Wolverines
Since Georgia upset Michigan in "The Big House" in 1965, older fans have clamored for Michigan to travel to Athens to try and get their win back "between the hedges." Fifty-six years later, the Wolverines still haven't responded. Perhaps a nationwide change in scheduling philosophy will change that.
Of course, Georgia would return the favor by traveling to Ann Arbor. That won't be an issue for Bulldogs Nation. As evident by the 2017 trip to Notre Dame, Georgia fans like to travel and invade historic college football stadiums.
Few stadiums in the world are as grand and gorgeous as Michigan Stadium. It is a simplistic single-deck stadium seating well over 100,000 people. When looking into the stands, all that can be seen is a sea of people. There are no scoreboards, suites or concrete interrupting the view.
The stadium is a true spectacle. The possibility of seeing Georgia play at "The Big House" sounds just as exciting as L.A. Memorial.
Iowa Hawkeyes and Washington Huskies
What is the best college football program Georgia has never played? The Bulldogs share a conference with Alabama, Auburn, Florida, LSU and Tennessee. They've played Oklahoma and Ohio State once and have played Texas and Nebraska quite a few times.
There's not any program in the upper echelon of college football that hasn't played Georgia at least once. So what about the next tier down? Two names stand out: Iowa and Washington. Somehow, Georgia has avoided both of these schools.
Iowa is particularly surprising since Georgia has played a Big Ten school 10 times since 1988. The Hawkeyes aren't high on the all-time winning percentage list, but they have five national titles and have enjoyed a program renaissance with head coach Kirk Ferentz, who is entering his 22nd year in Iowa City.
Washington has a pair of national titles and one of the best all-time winning percentages (.616) in college football history. Georgia has played a team from the Pacific Northwest only four times, and it hasn't played a Pac-12 team since 2009 (Colorado was in the Big 12 in 2010).
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