ATHENS —Georgia didn’t catch a break when the SEC schedule came out before the season, but the Bulldogs benefitted from the Ole Miss game time announcement.

The No. 2-ranked Bulldogs have a 3:30 p.m. game (ABC) against Florida this Saturday, but it was recently announced their game at No. 19 Ole Miss will be at 3:30 p.m. — instead of 7:30 p.m.

Rebels coach Lane Kiffin made it clear he was disappointed that the Alabama at LSU game was chosen for the 7:30 p.m. slot on Nov. 9, rather than Georgia’s road trip to Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.

For that matter, Kiffin — understandably feeling some pressure after entering the season with high expectations — pointed out the imperfections of a College Football Playoff system that treats the Power 4 conferences as equals, even as the current rankings indicate otherwise.

“So, who went at night? LSU gets to play at night again, I guess? Shocker,” Kiffin said at his press conference. “That’s two for two for them.”

Kiffin’s Ole Miss team had to play the Tigers under the lights in Death Valley on Oct. 12, losing a 29-26 overtime thriller in a game with SEC Championship Game and College Football Playoff ramifications.

“I think that’s proven over time in the NFL and college …. playing at night in electric atmospheres is a home-field advantage, tough when you’ve got to do that as an opposing team,” Kiffin said. “So that’s been proven for a long time…It is an advantage.

“I feel bad for our fans not having one night conference game. It’s really unfortunate for them.”

Kiffin also thinks it’s unfortunate and “odd” the Big 12 and ACC are on equal footing with the SEC and Big Ten when it comes to their league championship games getting first-round byes.

“I said when (12-team playoffs) first came out and everyone was excited that you’re going to have a lot of issues at the end when you’re going to have teams with byes that are ranked away below other teams, and you’re going to have teams ranked 11th or 12th in the country and they’re not going to get in over some lower ranked teams,” Kiffin said.

“Definitely a very odd system of the byes and the conferences since realignment has happened. There’s extremely big differences between these four conferences.”

To Kiffin’s point, the SEC has four teams in the Top 10 of the AP Top 25 poll and the Big Ten has three teams in the Top 10 — the ACC and Big 12 have one Top 10-ranked team, each.

“These two conferences (SEC and Big Ten) have so many teams up there and so much discrepancy of what a schedule is like in these two conferences,” Kiffin said, “especially this conference versus the other two conferences (ACC and Big 12), how you’ve got to be ready every week in the SEC because there’s no easy games here.”

Kiffin also noted how much more difficult it is for SEC teams to make college football’s version of the playoffs compared with the NFL’s playoff system.

“It’s challenging because there’s not a lot of margin for error, unlike the NFL playoffs when almost what, half the teams make the playoffs, and you can go a game or two above 500 and make it,” Kiffin said.

“This has really created so much on the games, and these games come down to the end, and a ref makes a call this way or that way or a kid goes in or out and all the sudden teams move way up or way down based off of that.”

Georgia coach Kirby Smart agreed with Kiffin about the increased parity in the league.

“There is definitely not a large margin of separation top to bottom in our league,” said Smart, in his ninth year coaching Georgia. “Probably the least it’s ever been since I’ve been in it.”