One Big Ten-SEC matchup for the 2025 and 2026 seasons was formally called off this week, as it was announced the USC-Ole Miss series would not be played. Lane Kiffin will not be returning to his former school, where Kiffin coached from 2010 through 2013.
Part of the reason the series was called off was because of the already arduous travel schedule USC is set to have as a new member of the Big Ten. The Trojans have road games this year at Michigan, Minnesota and Maryland.
There had been some previous doubt as to whether Georgia’s matchup with a West Coast Big Ten school would be played. Georgia is set to visit UCLA in 2025 before hosting the Bruins in 2026.
Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks last offered an update at May’s athletic board meetings on the series.
“Not yet. We’re still working through it,” Brooks said. “I would hope to have an update on that soon.”
We’ve seen series scuttled by conference realignment before. Georgia was set to play at Oklahoma in the 2023 season, but following Oklahoma’s impending move to the SEC, that game was replaced on the schedule with Ball State.
Given the nature of college scheduling, many of the marquee non-conference games are scheduled years out in advance. The home-and-home against UCLA was first announced in 2015, prior to Kirby Smart’s hiring at Georgia.
The Bulldogs have future home-and-homes against Clemson, Florida State and Ohio State, but those are all further down the line. Georgia does have non-conference games against Austin Peay, Charlotte and Georgia Tech scheduled for the 2025 season. Georgia does know its SEC slate for the 2025 season, as it will be an inverted version of the 2024 slate, with home games against Texas, Alabama, Kentucky and Ole Miss and road games against Tennessee, Auburn and Mississippi State. Georgia will play Florida in Jacksonville, Fla., both years.
The SEC has kicked around the idea of possibly expanding to a nine-game conference schedule for the 2026 season. Smart shared his opinions on that at the SEC spring meetings.
“I don’t care whether we play 8 or 9. I don’t care one bit,” Smart said. “If you tell me we’re going to get more teams in by playing nine, I vote for that. If we’re going to have a strength of schedule factor that says that these teams that play these really hard teams, they should be allowed to have two or three losses and get in, then I’m for it. If it doesn’t help us, than why do it.”
As it stands, Georgia’s game against UCLA is scheduled for Aug. 30, 2025, with the game set to be played in Los Angeles. We’ll see if that game ends up getting played, or,like the USC-Ole Miss matchups, if it falls by the wayside.
