HTRB examined SEC schedules and counted games outside the South (defined as Texas-to-North Carolina. Sorry, Virginia--their definition, not mine), and placed UGA last in the SEC for least often leaving the comforts of home. By their count, UGA hasn't played a non-bowl out-of-the-South game since Virginia Military Institute in 1966.
There's no place like home
Westerdawg defended the honor of the Dawgs in the comments section, but I still think UGA got short-shrifted by HTRB's analysis. Implicit in HTRB's argument is that reluctance to leave the South is equivalent of reluctance to play a difficult schedule. PWD points out that during the time Georgia was allegedly ducking and hiding from "national powers", UGA played two non-conference opponents every year that happen to be an hour from Athens. Particularly, UGA was playing Clem(p)son every year during the program's mid-70s to mid-80s heyday. Granted, UGA (like every school) has had its share of non-conference lightweights, but does UGA deserve to essentially be called a scheduling coward?
College Football Data Warehouse doesn't think so. CFDW analyzed and ranked the all-time strength of schedule and ranked UGA #2 all-time toughest schedule behind #1 Michigan. Their methodology isn't totally clear, but the bigger point is not which numbers they crunched and how (we'd probably be ranked #1 if we didn't close the season with a cream puff every year).
Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got. Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.
The value of the ranking in my mind is to underscore the larger point that leaving your region is not a pre-requisite to tough scheduling. I do not think that UGA has always had an aggressive scheduling philosophy, and I think it's not unreasonable to expect a team to tackle an ambitious home-and-home series at least once since the Johnson administration. However, that kind of out-of the-boxregion scheduling seems to be more for the fans and television than anything else.
Go Dawgs!
Dawgnoxious
