No, Georgia’s 2023 home football schedule is not particularly enticing after the SEC forced the Bulldogs and Tennessee to drop their series with Oklahoma who, along with Texas, will join the conference in 2025.

The Bulldogs scheduled Ball State to replace the Sooners on Sept. 9 of next year.

While many fans are upset with the notion that Georgia’s non-conference home schedule for 2023 will include Tennessee-Martin, Ball State, and UAB, athletic director Josh Brooks told reporters following Friday’s quarterly meeting of the UGA Athletic Association Board that Georgia was caught between a rock and a hard place when trying to find a replacement game.

According to Brooks, there were no Power 5 options available, only schools from the Group of Six.

“I understand the need and the want for bigger games at home,” Brooks said. “But we got stuck in a situation where there really weren’t a lot of options. So, the best bet was to go find who could fill that date, and at that point in time, there weren’t a lot of options.

“Thankfully, we were able to line up Ball State to fill that. It didn’t impact the home schedule other than adding a game.”

Georgia is paying Ball State $1.6 million to make the trip to Athens.

Brooks was asked by UGASports whether Georgia and Oklahoma could have played a neutral site game, but the two schools were unable to make it work.

Georgia’s AD was also asked how the future SEC schedule—and whether or not the league expands to nine conference game—could affect the series with UCLA in 2025 and 2026.

“I don’t know yet,” Brook said. “We’ll see about that. I don’t want to speak for them right now, but my focus right now is in what’s in front of us."

"Throughout all of that, what we’ve got to figure out, is what is our conference schedule going to be? Are we eight games? Are we nine games? Once that domino falls, then we can get into the specifics. But that’s the domino that’s got to fall.”

Brooks said there is no “firm timeline” on when the SEC might make such a decision, but added, “it’s obviously important that we’re moving as fast as possible.”

Once the SEC’s new schedule is released, Brooks believes fans will be pleased, because it will allow the Bulldogs and other teams in the conference to see a greater variety of teams rotate in on a shorter amount of time.

“Whatever we land on with a new schedule is going to provide a great variability of scheduling,” Brooks said. “We look at the possibility of one grouping—and not East and West—then you get a greater rotation, so you won’t get stagnant.”

Georgia president Jere Morehead said if the conference does go to a nine-game schedule, the current TV deal with ESPN would have to be re-negotiated.

“If we go to a nine-game schedule, is that going to provide an opportunity to re-negotiate the contracts with ESPN and the like?” Morehead said. “What we’ve negotiated now is for an eight-game schedule, so there’s a lot of factors that have to be played out before we know if we’re going to do eight or nine, and what’s best for Georgia.”

Morehead smiled, that if it were up to him, the league would announce it go to a nine-game conference schedule before beginning negotiations.

“It’s up to the Commissioner (Greg Sankey), of course,” Morehead said. “The way this is going to work is the Commissioner is going to work with the athletic directors, come up with a plan, and take it to the presidents. I doubt that’s going to happen by our October meeting with the presidents at the rate things are going. I’ll be surprised if this doesn’t extend further, but you never know.”

Brooks and Morehead also addressed the Georgia-Florida game in Jacksonville. The current contract ends in 2023 with an option to extend.

But whether or not that happens is unclear. Head coach Kirby Smart has stated the desire to move to a home-and-home series, better for hosting recruits.

“That’s still a very early conversation,” Morehead said.

“One of the key dominoes in this whole equation is getting our conference schedule set, then we can look at that,” Brooks said. “We’ll weigh that out. We’re not in a rush on that right now. We’re locked in through 2023 anyway. We want to see where we are with the conference schedule before we dig in and see where we’re at.”

Morehead chimed in again.

“… and see whether it’s an eight-game schedule or a nine-game schedule,” he said. “There’s just so many issues that haven’t been resolved before we even talk about Jacksonville.”