Yes, Georgia’s 2024 schedule was one of the toughest the Bulldogs have played in recent years.

Road trips to Alabama, Ole Miss, and Texas would cause many a college coach to reconsider their profession. It’s tough.

Despite the rugged journey, the Bulldogs still managed to win the SEC Championship, overcoming some serious on-field challenges to do so.

For Kirby Smart, it was likely the toughest schedule he’s faced at Georgia.

Unfortunately, that may not change.

During Tuesday’s press conference to preview spring practice, Smart was posed the following question: Could team theoretically improve from their previous season and not have it reflected in their record?

You bet.

“Yeah, absolutely. I think you hit it dead on. I think the mature view of this and the 10,000-feet view of this is we're in a different climate than we were previously,” Smart said. “We're in a different scheduling model than we were previously. The addition of Clemson on top of the people in our league, on top of the schedule that we had, I don't make any excuses about it. It's going to be really hard.”

Smart’s not kidding.

Georgia’s 2024 non-conference schedule of Clemson, Tennessee Tech, and UMass will be replaced with Marshall, Austin Peay, and Charlotte.

The SEC portion of the schedule will be exactly the same. What were road games in 2024 are now home contests for 2025, and vice versa.

“I mean, we repeat that schedule next year with the exception of Clemson out-of-conference game, so it's not going to get any easier,” Smart said.

But Smart says the Bulldogs won’t be alone.

“The norm is it's going to be challenging for everybody,” Smart said. “I mean, the two, three, four, five power conferences, you're going to play better and more competition, which is going to make things more challenging.”

The SEC and Big Ten hope to give their teams some help by ensuring their respective conferences get four teams in future College Football Playoffs.

But with the competition tougher than it’s ever been, the days of programs rolling through the season undefeated could be history.

“I think that is very true that it's going to be: there may be an outlier. There may be a team out there that has the right mix and does it exactly right,” Smart said. “But you're going to see teams that we thought going into last year that we would have to deal with more adversity, more failures, and how we deal with them would indicate our year. I was very pleased with how we responded to losses to keep ourselves afloat and to win the SEC championship, so that's not going to change over the years to come.”