The No. 4-ranked Georgia Bulldogs on Monday learned that their season-opening opponent is going to be Arkansas on the road. It will be one of the longest trips any team in the SEC will make this season.
The kickoff time and broadcast arrangements will be announced at a later date.
The good news is the Bulldogs will get to catch up with their old friend in Fayetteville. Sam Pittman, who coached Georgia’s offensive line the past four years, became the Razorbacks’ head coach in December.
The news was delivered during a special segment of the Paul Finebaum Show on the SEC Network on Monday afternoon. Never a conference to pass up the chance to make a fuss, the SEC made one by announcing only the season-opening opponent for each of the 14 SEC schools and then talking about it on air for the rest of the day.
A bigger fuss will be made this evening with a special SEC Network show at 7 p.m. unveil the entire conference schedule for the fall.
The openers for the other SEC teams are: Alabama at Missouri, Florida at Ole Miss, Kentucky at Auburn, Mississippi State at LSU, Tennessee at South Carolina and Vanderbilt at Texas A&M.
Georgia was scheduled to play Alabama in Tuscaloosa as its SEC opener before the coronavirus pandemic forced the league to revert to a conference-only schedule July 31. But that was going to be the third game of the season.
The Bulldogs have played only SEC opponents Missouri and Texas A&M, which joined the league in 2013, fewer times than it has Arkansas. Georgia leads the all-time series with Arkansas by a 10-4 margin. The two programs last met six years ago, when the Bulldogs prevailed 45-32 in Little Rock on Oct. 18, 2014. Their last meeting in Fayetteville occurred in the 2009 season, when Georgia won 52-41.
Pittman was one of Kirby Smart’s first hires when he became the Bulldogs’ head coach in December 2015. Pittman earned a reputation as a world-class recruiting of offensive line talent while in Athens. He spent his first three seasons as the offensive line coach, then was promoted to associate head coach before last season.
Last month, the SEC established Sept. 26 as the new kickoff for its 2020 football season to allow its universities to focus on the healthy return of their campus communities and the gradual re-introduction of athletics, as the 14 members of the SEC continue to monitor developments related to COVID-19.
As it is, the plan is to play 10 games over 12 weeks, then the hold the SEC Championship game between the Eastern and Western Division winners on Dec. 19 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, rescheduled from the original date of Dec. 5. The schedule will include one mid-season open date for each school and an open date on Dec. 12 for all schools.
