Greg McElroy reacts to Auburn's 'random' 2024 SEC schedule

On Wednesday night, the SEC released its 2024 conference schedule, giving everyone a look ahead at what that’s going to look like for the 16-team conference. One of the most interesting schedules was that of the Auburn Tigers.

On his show Always College Football, Greg McElroy reacted to Auburn’s 2024 conference schedule, saying it was seemingly random.

“Auburn, kind of a random schedule to be completely honest,” McElroy said. “You’ve got A&M, Arkansas, Vandy, Oklahoma at home, and you get both Alabama and Georgia on the road, plus Missouri, plus Kentucky.”

The silver lining to a slightly odd schedule is that Auburn’s two biggest traditional rivals were protected. It’s just strange that both the Alabama and Georgia games are going to be on the road.

“Look at Auburn’s schedule. There wasn’t a whole lot of consistency across the board, but you did protect their two biggest rivals. The Iron Bowl and the [Deep] South’s Oldest Rivalry, Auburn-Georgia. So, I’m glad that those two games remained. The others felt just kind of thrown together a little bit with the Auburn Tigers.”

One notable team that Auburn won’t be playing in 2024 is Florida. The Gators and Tigers at least used to be rivals because of their geography. However, despite playing 84 times in their history, the two have only met once since 2012.

Another thing that the SEC clearly wanted was for every team to either play Texas or Oklahoma. Auburn ended up drawing the Sooners. However, beyond that, as McElroy pointed out, the schedule is relatively random and seemingly designed to help preserve a relatively similar strength of schedule with other SEC teams.

Why Auburn will go under the win total in 2023

Before 2024, Auburn will have to play its 2023 season. Unfortunately, for the Tigers, it could be a transitional season while Hugh Freeze works on getting things rolling. Because of this, On3’s JD PicKell expects the SEC to be too much for the Tigers to hit their win total of 6.5.

“If we can call a spade a spade, the SEC is going to be a gauntlet. Auburn has to play a lot of the top teams in the SEC. That’s a fact,” PicKell said.

“There’s a reason Hugh Freeze is the head coach now. There’s is a reason Bryan Harsin is no longer on the sideline for Auburn. Why? They weren’t getting it done. Recruiting. People will say things about culture… Auburn missed a bowl game last year. They are in an acclimation period, revamp period. Whatever kind of verbiage you want to put to it, they’re revamping.”