It'll be very different, but the 2024 schedule is ultimately good for Auburn
While some traditional matchups have been axed in the name of expansion, the Tigers are a winner in a more balanced SEC.
(Auburn Athletics)
The year is 1933. It’s the first season of football since 13 members of the gigantic Southern Conference split off and formed a league that we now know as the SEC.
Auburn is fresh off an undefeated season in which it shared the conference title under Chet A. Wynne, with the legendary Jimmy Hitchcock serving as the team captain. (The captain in 1933 was Hitchcock’s All-SEC backfield partner at quarterback, the incredibly named Ripper Williams.)
In its first season in the SEC, Auburn played Georgia Tech, Tulane, Georgia and Florida inside the conference. The first two would later leave the SEC, while the latter two would make up two-thirds of the long-running “Amen Corner” in Auburn’s schedules.
To say college football scheduling was chaotic 90 years ago would be a massive understatement. Auburn only played four SEC games that season, facing Birmingham-Southern, Howard (now known as Samford), George Washington, Duke, now-Division III school Oglethorpe and South Carolina in non-conference play.
Alabama, the 1933 SEC champion, played six conference games that season. Tennessee and a few other schools played seven. It would take some time for things to get more organized.
When it did, Mississippi State soon became a permanent fixture on Auburn’s schedule. And when the league expanded in the early 90s, Ole Miss and LSU went from mostly regular opponents to locked-in annual opponents.
In 2024, the SEC will undergo another transformation. This time, it won't be as simple as when Texas A&M and Missouri were added to the two-division format. Instead, the league is going away from that outdated system and going with a more modern and balanced approach.
During a year in which the College Football Playoff will expand to 12 teams, the SEC will have a new type of schedule as it welcomes Texas and Oklahoma.
When the league announced the SEC matchups for the 2024 slate on Wednesday evening, it said that preserving the biggest rivalries and maintaining competitive balance were its guiding forces.
Auburn’s 2024 Home SEC Opponents
Arkansas
Oklahoma
Texas A&M
Vanderbilt
Auburn’s 2024 Road SEC Opponents
Alabama
Georgia
Kentucky
Missouri
So Alabama and Georgia will remain on Auburn’s schedule as the league tries to figure out if it wants to go to nine games or stay at eight in the future. (Both opponents will be played on the road, as the bridge year isn’t a good time to sort out the home/away issue for the Tigers’ powerhouse rivalry games.)
Auburn will also pick up Oklahoma, which it last played in the Sugar Bowl at the end of the 2016 season, as the conference wanted to ensure that everybody played one of the high-profile newcomers.
But that trio of regular SEC West rivals for the last few decades? Auburn won’t be playing LSU for the first time since 1991. And it won’t be playing Ole Miss for the first time since 1989.
Mississippi State, the team that Auburn has played more times than anybody but Georgia? Off the schedule for the first time since 1954.
You have to go all the way back to that first SEC season in 1933 for a time when Auburn didn’t play either Mississippi school or LSU.
That’s the price to pay for expansion, a move that will surely lead to even more money for Auburn and the rest of the members of college sports’ most powerful conference.
Friend of the newsletter and recent Observer podcast guest Justin Lee said it best when he tweeted this last night:
I think Auburn losing the annual LSU game is akin to losing the annual Florida game and Tennessee game in the 90's — sucks, but nothing lost that can't be gained. Obviously I think the Iron Bowl and the Georgia game are what Auburn administration should want to keep forever.
Annual games such as LSU and the Mississippi schools were always going to be on the chopping block, no matter if the SEC’s permanent rival plans past 2024 featured one or three teams.
In a world where Auburn keeps playing the Iron Bowl and the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry each season, this is a price that the Tigers and their fans should be willing to pay.
Because, now, the rest of the SEC gets a taste of some of what Auburn has dealt with for a while.