At long last, the SEC is up to 16 teams. Texas and Oklahoma have finally joined the league as official members on Monday, July 1.
The news that the two programs would join the SEC first came to light in July of 2021. Now nearly three years later, the two will help form what could be the best football league in the country.
Much has changed since Texas and Oklahoma first made it known they would be coming into the league. Brock Bowers had yet to play a down for Georgia and Kirby Smart had not yet won a national championship.
Smart has since won two and has the Bulldogs poised to contend for a third. To do so though, he’ll have to go through Texas this season, and likely Oklahoma in the future.
The Bulldogs will play Texas at least twice over the next two seasons. Georgia will visit Austin on Oct. 19 of this season. The Longhorns will make their first-ever trip to Athens in 2025.
As for Oklahoma, the Sooner are not yet on the schedule for Georgia. The two teams were set to meet during the 2023 season, but that game was scraped due to the Sooners’ move into the SEC.
Of course, there is the possibility that Georgia could face either side in the SEC championship or College Football Playoff. The Longhorns made the latter a season ago after going 12-1 during the regular season. Texas lost to Washington in the semifinals.
Oklahoma has made the College Football Playoff four times, more than that of the Bulldogs. The two sides famously met in the 2018 Rose Bowl, with Georgia pulling out an iconic 54-48 victory.
The Sooners have not enjoyed the same level of success as Georgia when they’ve gotten to the playoffs. Oklahoma is 0-4 in playoff games, with three of those losses coming under Lincoln Riley.
Brent Venables is now the coach at Oklahoma, entering his third season in charge. The Sooners made a big improvement in his second year, going from a six-win team to a 10-win program.
Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian is coming off his best season ever as a coach, winning double-digit games for the first time in his career.
Smart expects both coaches to make the SEC better.
“Both their coaching staffs are really good,” Smart said at SEC spring meetings. “Both Sark and Brent both have SEC-kind of experience with Brent being over in the ACC and coaching at Clemson, he’s played SEC teams kind of forever. So they both know the climate they’re jumping into.”
If Georgia is seen as the top contender in the SEC this fall, the Longhorns are viewed as a close 1b option. Many prognosticators think that if the Bulldogs are to drop a game, it will come on the road against the Longhorns.
Texas has recruited extremely well of late, including beating Georgia for coveted quarterback prospect Arch Manning in the 2023 recruiting cycle. The Longhorns signed the No. 6 ranked recruiting class in the 2024 cycle, while Oklahoma came in at No. 9.
As for a recruiting base, Georgia hasn’t been shy about going into Texas for prospects. In the 2024 cycle, Georgia pulled 5-star teammates Justin Williams and Joseph Jonah-Ajonye from the Lone Star State. Georgia also signed 4-star offensive tackle Michael Uini as well. Other current Bulldogs from the state include wide receiver Dillon Bell, wide receiver Anthony Evans and cornerback Julio Humphrey.
“Yeah, it’s extremely tough, the fact that they’re in our conference, they’re further away, they’re a powerful football team, they’ve got a great state to recruit in,” Smart said. “We think it makes our conference better, you know? Our brand extends further west. Two tremendous programs. When you add those two in, it makes the scheduling much tougher.”
The addition of Texas and Oklahoma led to the SEC dissolving divisions. Gone are the days when Georgia will play Vanderbilt and South Carolina every season.
As it stands, the league will have an eight-game conference schedule for the 2024 and 2025 seasons. The belief is that if ESPN will give the SEC more money, a ninth conference game will be added to the slate.
“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.”
Making the SEC championship game will be more difficult, as those aforementioned games against South Carolina and Vanderbilt have been replaced with trips to Alabama and Texas.
When Georgia visits Austin this season, it will be the first time Georgia plays a conference game in Texas. The Texas A&M Aggies joined the league, along with Missouri, in 2012, yet Georgia has still not made a visit to College Station, Texas.
That Georgia will not have to wait at all to see the Longhorns speaks to how different these additions are. Texas and Oklahoma are bigger brads, with both programs winning national championships in the last 25 years.
Both programs have the ability to compete for titles on an annual basis. Their introduction into the league will undoubtedly make it tougher for Georgia to win a national title, even if adding the two programs does bring in more money and move avenues into recruiting the state of Texas.
