After weeks of delays thanks to the additions of Texas A&M and Missouri as its 13th and 14th members, the SEC has finally released its 2012 conference schedule.
Next year’s league slate will open with South Carolina traveling to Vanderbilt on opening weekend Aug. 30, while the two newest members will be one of a handful of games to close out the season Nov. 24, with Mizzou traveling to College Station to take on the Aggies. Alabama and Florida are the only schools that will face both Mizzou (SEC East) and A&M (SEC West) in their inaugural SEC season.
For the second straight season, 2011 SEC East champion Georgia will avoid both Alabama and LSU. Instead, the Bulldogs’ two cross-divisional games will be against Ole Miss and Auburn to close out conference play. According to Jon Solomon of the Birmingham News, UGA will have “the easiest SEC schedule based on opponents’ 2011 overall records (.500).”
Coming off a winless 2011 season in conference play and with a new head coach in Hugh Freeze, Ole Miss has an absolutely brutal 2012 league schedule: all eight of their SEC opponents will play in bowl games this season, and they will take road trips to Alabama, LSU, Arkansas and Georgia — the top four teams in the conference this past season. Solomon notes that the Rebels will have the toughest schedule in the conference based on this year’s records. Good luck with that, Coach Freeze.
The press release notes that the 2012 schedule is not based on any other previous or future scheduling formats. The SEC athletic directors will convene in Spring 2012 to begin formulating scheduling principles for the 2013 season and beyond.
“The SEC transition team and our athletic directors did a great job with significant logistical challenges in a short time frame in developing the 2012 football conference schedule,” said SEC Commissioner Mike Slive. “The ability to come together for the conference is what makes the SEC so strong and that was evident yet again in this process.”
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