With Georgia-Clemson home-and-home in question, frustration rises for all sides

GREENSBORO — It’s safe to say that there are no winners when it comes to Georgia’s nonconference scheduling stance.

The Bulldogs recently called off a home-and-home with Florida State that had been scheduled for 2027 and 2028. The series became the fourth in the last two seasons to be scrapped.

The two sides still hope to play each other in a nonconference game — just one that will be played at a neutral site in 2028, rather than at Sanford Stadium or Doak Campbell Stadium.

“Instead of just eliminating those games altogether, we’re trying to find a way to keep as many of those on the schedule,” Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks said. “And the simplest way to do that would be to move to a neutral site, right?”

There’s confidence that Georgia and Florida State will eventually play each other. That is likely to be played in either Nashville, Tennessee, or Orlando, Florida, per On3’s Chris Low, and either location doesn’t exactly have Georgia fans looking forward to the game.

Georgia has played big nonconference games in neutral-site venues before.

The Bulldogs have beaten Oregon, Clemson and North Carolina in Atlanta and Charlotte, North Carolina, over the previous decade. By comparison, the only nonconference home-and-home series played by the Bulldogs in that time span came against Notre Dame in 2017 and 2019.

Georgia fans have fond memories of both games, as the Bulldogs won both.

As for its future nonconference games, Brooks cast further doubt about a potential series against Clemson. The Bulldogs are set to play the Tigers in 2029 and 2030.

Brooks is focused on solving the current Florida State situation, but the Georgia athletic director did admit it wouldn’t come as a surprise if the Clemson series suffered the same fate as the Florida State one.

“Everything’s on the table right now with that,” Brooks said. “But right now, the focus is purely on the Florida State game.”

Florida State and Georgia do not hold the same history that the Bulldogs and Tigers do. FSU and UGA played a home-and-home in 2013 and 2014. The Tigers won in Clemson in 2013, with the 2014 game against Clemson representing one of the last truly great Georgia home wins of the Mark Richt era.

The sport has changed greatly since Richt’s Bulldogs and Dabo Swinney’s Tigers battled. The 2013 season was the last without the College Football Playoff. By 2029, the College Football Playoff could well have exploded to 24 teams.

The push for a larger playoff field has some of the same root issues for moving a home-and-home series to a neutral site venue. It all comes back to money in one form or another.

“You have to get fans to understand that we’re in a new era where money is a huge piece of the competitive advantage,” Brooks said.

Consider that in the 2027 Georgia athletic budget, the game that projects to bring in the largest ticket revenue is the contest against Florida. The game, played in Atlanta this season, is expected to bring $8.5 million in ticket revenue. A home game against 2025 College Football Playoff participant Oklahoma isn’t expected to generate even $6 million.

Money also plays a part in why the SEC moved to a nine-game conference schedule.

The league will earn more money from its television partner because of the extra inventory. Even if SEC coaches have made it pretty clear they don’t love the idea of adding another power conference game to the schedule.

Before the expanded conference slate, Georgia had already agreed to play 10 games against Power 4 foes in 2026 through 2033. With the College Football Playoff committee not really valuing tougher schedules, you can understand why schools wouldn’t want to push themselves even further than they already have to.

Alabama, Florida and South Carolina have all also called off future nonconference series this offseason.

“We’re replacing that with a ninth conference game, right? So that’s the trade-off, right,” Brooks said. “We have and we still continue to play more P4 opponents than the majority of schools in college athletics.”

Marquee nonconference games drive conversation throughout the offseason. There’s a greater buzz during the summer months when Georgia gets to open the season against Florida State rather than Tennessee State.

It seems that energy, usually positive and optimistic, has now been channeled negatively. There’s frustration from both the fan and administrative sides about the state of things.

Brooks recently advocated for NCAA championships to remain on college campuses — even beyond Athens, which has a special history when it comes to the NCAA tennis championships.

But in that same plea to the NCAA, Brooks’ mentions quickly became filled with retorts about moving the Florida State ― and now, possibly, Clemson ― home-and-home away from Athens and into a neutral venue.

“Look at those games we’ve had in Atlanta and Charlotte,” Brooks said. “They’ve been wildly successful, and it’s been energy. So it’s not a fair comparison. I know it’s an easy way to ‘gotcha’ and say you said this on this end, but that’s not — it’s apples to oranges.”

There’s an obvious frustration when it comes to the scheduling model. It doesn’t just impact Georgia but seemingly all high-powered college football programs.

The latest episodes make it worth wondering whether there would’ve been less outrage if Brooks had announced that the Clemson series wouldn’t be played at all, rather than honestly saying a neutral site game is a possibility.

In the grand scheme, nonconference scheduling is further down the pecking order of things to fix when it comes to college sports at the moment.

But whereas the transfer portal, NIL and the playoff format have a massive impact on college football, taking away marquee home games makes a much greater impact on the fan.

As the Florida State and Clemson decisions show, the anger from Georgia fans will continue to rise. Money would be the only possible explanation for why Georgia could play games against border foes in Nashville and Dallas.