Following Thursday’s news that the SEC was moving to a 10-game conference only schedule for 2020, Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity spoke with beat writers for 20 minutes on Zoom to discuss the actions of the day.

Among the highlights, the season will start Sept. 26, with two still-to-be determined teams from the West added to this year’s slate.

That’s not all. For the first time since 1924, the Bulldogs will not be playing Georgia Tech.

The entire transcript of what he had to say is included below:

Can you express not being able to play non-conference opponents?

McGarity: “Was I surprised? No, because that was the recommendation that was made to the presidents after our call yesterday, so I was not surprised in the decision. We had so many variations of models to look at that we had to narrow them down to two or three, which we did. But in the final analysis, keeping everything within the SEC was from a medical standpoint for the whole. There are four of us who have in-state rivalries, but there are 10 others who don’t. So, when you’re able to control your schedule from SEC-only, it’s more efficient. You don’t have to worry about trying to schedule when those games happen, and how it’s fair to the other schools, knowing how you’ve got some flexibility on the back end with the SEC championship date. Starting later in the fall, certainly all of those things came into play, which led to the decision to play SEC games only.”

Is the delay because you’re worried about a spike in Covid?

McGarity: “We certainly listened to our medical professionals and felt like a later start would really put us in a better position from a health standpoint, and to be able to observe what’s going on with others who may start on time, we’d be able to see what happens in the NFL, just have more dates to compare before we started. So, all those things lined up, and certainly there were a lot of robust discussions in the room, but we all planned it and agreed that the 10-game schedule was where we needed to end up.”

Do you expect you’ll open the season at Alabama, and the next games in the SEC West rotation, Arkansas and Mississippi State, will be the two teams added?

McGarity: “I wouldn’t pay attention to any dates. The only thing that's certain is, we’ll play our Eastern opponents, and then we have Auburn and Alabama, obviously, and then two more. But we’ve not even started that discussion, and it wasn’t the intent to go there first, because it might have swayed some decision making if we knew who we were going to play. But we will start that discussion very soon with the Commissioner.”

Do you know yet how you will handle contracts for the non-conference opponents you will not be playing?

McGarity: “We’ll have our legal experts review that and deal with that after their review, and go from there.”

On a personal level, do you feel anything emotional about the fact a rivalry game is being sacrificed?

McGarity: “Sure. That game means so much to everyone, and it’s just unfortunate that it was affected. But there's so much change going on in today’s world, and we need to be ready to expect the unexpected. It just happened; it was not able to be worked out. It’s unfortunate, but we look forward to resuming the rivalry in 2021, and we’ll just go from there.”

Has there been any discussion of the Georgia-Florida game not being in Jacksonville?

McGarity: “No. I talked to Scott (Florida AD Scott Stricklin) and one thing we don’t want to do is play Florida here with a limited crowd and then go to Gainesville in 2021 with 93,000 fans. I don’t think we want to be in that position. Right now, unless something changes, that game will be in Jacksonville.”

Would you say that this assures that a football season will come online?

McGarity: "We all hope, but you saw what happened to the Marlins. I mean, no one in College Football has practiced yet. So, I think this is just a date. It's a date we're holding. We sure hope we can start then, but I think, as we've seen in professional sports already, this can change on a dime. But it does put kind of a marker in the sand by saying, 'This is when we're going to start,' and we're just hoping we can certainly do our part and that date does become a reality.”

So will the current schedule teams stay on the schedule?

McGarity: "Yes. That will not change. We'll just add two. We'll play two of the five other western opponents, and we don't know who they are right now. Opponents will stay intact; dates maybe not."

Divisions stay intact?

McGarity: "Yes."

Is there a sigh of financial relief to have a date in place?

McGarity: "Well, it allows us to narrow in on what our revenue will be as well as our expenses to facilitate the games. So that's a relief I know to a lot of staff members, is to provide some clarity. I know it will be for the student athletes. They have a little direction now. They don't know who they play, they don't know exactly when practice will start, so we've got to get on that really quickly to nail down those two items there. I think it does kind of close the door somewhat in format, and hope to play but we just have to work on the details or activate the plans that we've been working on so long."

When is the cut off to say that this just isn't worth it (no fans, no rivalry games, etc.), move to spring?

McGarity: "The spring was really not an option that we discussed. It was a fallback if everything else failed, but we just really listened to the science. We have an obligation to try to play. Whether it's volleyball, soccer, these young people have a three, four, or five-year window to participate, and we have an obligation to try to make that happen. But it's gotta be done in a safe manner. They have to feel safe. Their parents have to feel safe, and it's a new world. We all have to learn how to live in a COVID society. Who thought we'd be on a Zoom call March 1? Who thought we'd be having to wear a mask everywhere we go? And it's not going away right now. So we have to learn how to live with this. We can control certain aspects. We can control masking. We can control where we go. We can control who we hang out with. All of those things are important across the board and that's going to be a challenge to make sure that our fans adhere to the guidelines that'll be in place because it's really important that we all follow this protocol."

As far as a Georgia Tech game in 2021, will that still be in Atlanta, or will that be sent back to Athens?

McGarity: “I haven’t talked to Todd (Todd Stansbury, Georgia Tech AD) yet. We spoke last week. I’m sure we’ll have a discussion on that and see what we can do, and have that discussion. Just so much has happened yesterday and today with the ACC. Todd and I just haven’t been able to huddle up on that.”

You all haven’t liked necessarily the set up of the end of your schedule when you play Tech on the road and when you play Auburn. Is that something you’d like to change?

McGarity: “We’ll just take a look at it. That’s something we don’t have to worry about right now. Certainly, that’s something we’ll re-visit here in the coming months.”

When do you expect the schedule to be released?

McGarity: "As the release said, just at a later date. That kind of mirrored my comments. We’ll start the discussion on that now that we have a format. We’ll start the discussion on that in the coming days.”

Will fans in the stands be a conference wide choice or individual?

McGarity: “As you saw in the release, I think the conference will set some expectations. I don’t think they’ll get down to particular numbers, but the expectation of social distancing, the expectation of masking, the expectations that we will follow CDC guidelines. I think you’ve seen what’s happened in some NFL stadiums, and I would expect probably college football to mirror that. The safety of everyone is of the upmost importance, so whatever that will yield in our stadium, that’s what we’ll go with. We’ve got a little time. It’s not pressing right now, but as soon as we have the information on our opponents and our home dates, then certainly we’ll be able to announce those things at that time.”

If any of the other 10 schools had state rivalries like Florida, Kentucky and South Carolina, do you think there would have been more effort to save rivalry games?

McGarity: “That’s a hypothetical. I don’t know. I just don’t know. I know the scheduling aspect of it, open dates, trying to make sure you have some type of fair and equitable schedule drove the discussion, but certainly that was a topic that was discussed. You have to remember there are 14 teams in the league, and everybody doesn’t get their way every time.”

When will football preseason practices start?

McGarity: "That’s a great discussion. That’s the next discussion that will be had. Do you start 29 days before your first date, or do you start next week? There will be a lot of discussion in the medical community about that; the head coaches will be discussing that. The NCAA may have to weigh in on that as well. That’s undetermined in this point in time.”

Did the ACC making a decision when they did influence this decision?

McGarity: “No. It just kind of shocked us when it came out when it did, because we had just gotten off our call, I think an hour earlier. We knew they were meeting on Wednesday, but I don’t think we really expected that to happen, but no, we had our discussion before the ACC announcement came out.”

Did the chancellors and president change ADs recommendations or come back to you guys with anything?

McGarity: “They wanted to make sure the protections were in place for the fans. As you can tell in the release, as far as the social distancing and making sure that the conference set guidelines, not getting into specifics, but there are certain expectations that anyone coming to an SEC game should have. They should feel safe; they should feel the institution is using the best practices. It’s going to be different. Masks will be mandatory. We’ve got a great plan. Give a lot of credit to Josh Brooks and his staff. We’ve had an army of individuals working on what would our social distancing plan be. We’re going through the final pieces of that now. Once we release that, I think those who are able to come to our games can feel they’re as safe as possible, that we understand that some people that are able to come to the game may not feel comfortable coming to the game. We understand that. We’ll do our best to create the safest environment for anyone in the confines of Sanford Stadium whether that’s fans or student-athletes. That’s our charge.”

What communication have you had with parents?

McGarity: “Each team handles parent conferences. We had a call at 4:30 today, a weekly call with any parent, any student-athlete that wants to log in, and we have our whole staff and we talk about it. Today’s call we probably had 50 questions from parents, from testing to isolation to weight room protocol to meals. You name it, and we’re out there answering every question. And we’re also doing that with our student-athletes. We do that every week. They’re able to opt in. It’ll be a lot more intense when they do come back to start classes on the 20th. But I tell you what, it’s absolutely amazing to watch a lot of people that have really done a lot of heavy lifting. I know I talk a lot about Ron Courson; the whole training crew. You know our maintenance crew, if you see what they had to do to prepare and keep the weight room and all the buildings clean from a hygenine standpoint. And our strength staff, and coaches in masks, it’s so different, and it’s so foreign from what we’ve become accustomed to. But we’ve adjusted to it. We’ve got to continue to adjust to it, and be careful. Because we know it can get out of hand quickly if we ignore certain things.”

So, you have five home games, four road games, and one neutral site, correct?

McGarity: “Correct.”

Have you had any initial talks with Virginia about getting them on for another year?

McGarity: “Well, Carla (Virginia AD Carla Moore) did call me yesterday after the ACC vote. I said, Carla we are not coming to Virginia, let’s just make sure that’s very clear, we are not coming up to Charlottesville to play as your plus-one. But no, Josh Brooks has reached out to East Tennessee State and ULM today, and we talked to them earlier, just asking them to be patient. Perhaps a future schedule, we just haven’t gone down that road yet to see if we have any openings. We’re kind of full. I haven’t gone down my schedule yet, but we don’t have a lot of openings. So we’ll just have to let the legal experts work through that and see what flexibility we have, or if we have flexibility with Josh Lee and our schedules moving forward to maybe work that into the schedule.”

Any chance of going rogue and still play Georgia Tech just to keep the rivalry going?

McGarity: “There’s a mandate that we play 10 games. You have two open weeks. You’ve got one in the middle of the season that everybody has an open date on the 12th. I don’t think Kirby would be too excited to play 10 SEC games and then play Tech the week before hopefully, if we do well this year, to be in Atlanta. It’s unfortunate. It’s just the way everything fell. We’ll move forward and renew the rivalry next year.”

How hard is it to wrap your head around the Georgia Tech game not happening?

McGarity: “It’ll probably sink in here the next couple days. It’s unfortunate. And you’re seeing it really around college athletes this year. There are so many abnormal situations that are in play, that will certainly create a lot of disappointment and unfortunate. It’ll just have to be an open year. I’d have to look back on other rivalries and see if there were times when certain rivalries didn’t play. The pandemic has just created so many oddities that a lot of things are almost out of your control. It’s just one of the things that are unfortunate when you’re in a situation like that. It’s just unfortunate.”