Another day, another step closer to being able to play football this fall.

Those were the sentiments of Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity in a telephone interview with UGASports, following Tuesday’s decision by the SEC to start fall practice on August 17.

“We said it from Day 1 that we’re going to take the advice of the medical advisory task force, and this was their recommendation,” McGarity said. “We accepted it unanimously, so we all move forward.”

Beginning August 17 and until the opening game, schools are allowed 25 practices with a limit of 20 hours per week of practice time. A five-day acclimatization period is required, with two days in helmets only, two days in shells before the fifth day in full pads.

Schools will be required to provide student-athletes a minimum of two days off each week until the week before the first game of the season.

“I think you have certain milestones. You have milestones of when you start the season, you had a milestone of when to start practice, you have a milestone of who do you play, you have a milestone of the date you play,” McGarity said. “They’re incremental steps. We’ve got two of the four taken care of. We need to deal with the other two and it will be up to everyone to execute the plans that will be in place.”

As for the other two, first is the still-to-be-determined 10-game conference-only schedule. Then UGA hopes to determine how many fans can attend, what to do about tailgating, parking and more.

According to McGarity, once the schedule is set and the official go-ahead is given to start the 2020 season, UGA will announce all its plans.

“I would hate to put information out there and let it kind of drip, drip. I’d rather just rip the band-aid off at one time, talk about crowds, talk about tailgating, talk about parking, talk about everything – the Florida game – just talk about everything and give people time to read, be educated and then react. So, that’s sort of the plan. We’re just waiting for the SEC lets us know who and when.”

Although speculation has been that news could come this week, McGarity said conference athletic directors have yet to be told that will occur.

“I don’t know. I stopped guessing when we’ll have information because I was always wrong internally to myself,” said McGarity, who besides football, has been working with other ADs and the league to finalize the new schedules for volleyball and soccer, both of which started practice Monday.

Piecing together the schedule for the season, which will kick off Sept. 26, is easier said than done.

SEC Associate Commissioner Mark Womack has been charged with putting together each team’s respective 10-game slate.

“He’s the point person on future scheduling, he’s the point person on everything to do with football scheduling, but I know that there are many other fingerprints on that schedule within the SEC,” McGarity said. “There are a lot of people that weigh in, there are a lot of people that coordinate with Mark, but Mark serves as that point. It’s not Mark doing his own thing. He accumulates all the info from all the other SEC administrative staff and will create a schedule that we’ll see at one time, say 'Let’s go play,' and 'Let’s move forward.'”

Conference athletic directors and head coaches, however, are not being consulted.

“None. That’s not happening. I think that one thing people always think is there is an agenda or a motive out there. I think people that think that, they don't know the integrity of the people that play here,” McGarity said. “If we felt like that as a conference that there was favoritism, you would see a ping-pong ball selection for this. But, we all feel very confident in the process, we know it’s going to be impossible to make everybody happy but we feel confident that the best decision for the conference as a whole is to leave it in the hands of the conference to make those decisions.”

Although the speculation has been that the two new teams will come from the next two up from each school’s respective rotation, McGarity said he and other athletic directors have not been told how those games will be selected.

“There’s no formula. I think Mark and the staff, looking at different models, making sure that each team has five home games, making sure they aren’t playing like three games in a row, making sure there’s an off week between Week 5 and Week 7, making sure that you may have special accommodations as far as dates that need to be in play,” McGarity said. “If I’m Alabama or Auburn, Ole Miss or Mississippi State, I’m sure I’m advocating to put us at the end of the year. Those would be probably the types of information that you would provide the conference.”

Georgia’s 10-game slate will include four at Sanford Stadium, the Florida game in Jacksonville, and five others on the road.

“We’ve got commencement on Oct. 16, so you could probably say we won’t be at home that weekend. We weren’t going to be home anyway. We were going to be at Missouri,” McGarity said. “But that’s the type of thing you notify the conference about, any conflicts that you may have.”

Although when schools take their bye is part of the formula when putting together the schedule, McGarity doesn’t anticipate there being another issue like last fall where multiple schools had bye weeks before they were to play the Bulldogs.

“With everybody off on Dec. 12, that might happen one time, it’s certainly not going to happen two or three times,” said McGarity, who admits there’s probably going to be some schools not very happy with how the respective schedules ultimately play out.

“There’s just so many things in play. I can’t imagine the difficulty in running models, first of all, that can work, and then having models that provide equity, or logic, although logic is probably out the window, too, because you’ve got to make it all fit,” he said. “I’m sure when they tell us what the schedule is, some may be upset, some may be happy, but one thing for sure it won’t be due to one athletic director doing more or another one less. That’s unfounded and I think that’s unfair.”

McGarity said LSU coach Ed Orgeron had it right all along.

“It’s like Coach Orgeron said, 'Just tell me who we’re playing and let’s go play,'” McGarity said. “I think that’s the attitude everyone needs, 'Hey, let’s go play. There’s not a perfect schedule; let’s go play.'”