Breaking down the toughest stretches on the 2024 SEC schedule

The SEC will take on a new look in 2024, both with its football schedule and its league membership. Two new teams are joining the league, and the conference unveiled its eight-game 2024 schedule on Wednesday during a special on ESPN.

After the reveal, the group of analysts — Greg McElroy, Tim Tebow, Joey Galloway and Paul Finebaum — discussed which team could have the toughest stretches next season. The answers were mixed, but one team that came up right away was Georgia, according to Tebow and McElroy.

The Bulldogs, currently the two-time defending national champions, have a stretch that involves road games at Alabama and Texas before a bye week. Then, they take on Florida in the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party and head to Ole Miss to wrap up the six-game run.

That caught McElroy’s attention right away.

“That’s kind of where my eyesight went is to the middle of that meat of that Georgia schedule,” McElroy said. “I mean, they are two-time defending champ until dethroned here in a few weeks. But either way, I mean, we’re talking about an elite team that has to go on the road in a four-week span to two current Playoff teams, and a team that has beaten them two of the last three in Alabama.

“So it’s pretty crazy to think about that, and then you have Auburn in there, which is a rivalry. … I think Mississippi State gonna be tricky this year. They’ve been a little bit of a thorn in the side. If it was in Starkville in the middle of that stretch, I think it’d be a little tougher. But Jeff Lebby’s gonna make that offense difficult to defend, and they’ll probably have a couple tricks up their sleeve.”

To Finebaum, though, South Carolina could find itself going through a tough few weeks in October. The Gamecocks not only have to take on Ole Miss at home, but they also have to go to Alabama and Oklahoma in back-to-back weeks afterward. That’s not going to be easy.

“I found South Carolina’s to be treacherous,” Finebaum said. “They have a home game Oct. 5 against Ole Miss, and then they get to go to Alabama the next week. And after they recover from that, they go to Norman, Oklahoma. That’s brutal.”

Why Florida’s final stretch could be a ‘gauntlet’

Florida’s schedule, though, features one of the most challenging runs in the conference. Starting with the Cocktail Party on Nov. 2, the Gators wrap up the season with Texas, LSU, Ole Miss and Florida State. That comes after a bye week to recover from Tennessee and Kentucky in back-to-back weeks.

To Galloway, that’s going to show people plenty about Billy Napier’s group.

“I’m gonna go with Florida, and it’s not just what they have in November,” Galloway said. “Before that, they go to Tennessee, they have Kentucky — which we know will be a physical football team — then they have the open date.

“And then, hello, Florida. They have Georgia, then they go to Texas, LSU, Ole Miss and at Florida State. I don’t know that there’s a team in the country facing a gauntlet quite like that at the end of a season when you have been through the first half, and we talked about, can you stay healthy? That’s gonna be tough for Florida.”

While Tebow said Georgia’s SEC schedule could be tough for discussion purposes, he also acknowledged how difficult Florida’s will be in 2024.

“I think that’s gonna be the hardest, as well,” Tebow said.