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Chris Low, ESPN Senior Writer
Alabama and Georgia will meet during the 2024 regular season in Tuscaloosa, which will be only their fifth regular-season matchup in the past 20 years, sources told ESPN on Wednesday.
With the full 2024 schedule set to be released Wednesday night (7 ET, SEC Network), some of the other highlights, sources told ESPN, include Texas playing at Texas A&M.
With Texas and Oklahoma joining the league in 2024, the SEC voted to stay at eight conference games for the 2024 season in a bridge schedule before determining a more permanent schedule for the future, which includes potentially adding a ninth conference game.
Alabama and Georgia have combined to win five of the past eight college football national championships, but they last met in the regular season during the 2020 COVID-19 season when SEC schools played a 10-game all-league schedule. The programs have faced off against each other five times over the past six seasons, but four of those matchups came in either the SEC championship game or the College Football Playoff National Championship Game.
The two-time defending national champion Bulldogs won 33-18 in the national championship game to cap the 2021 season. The Crimson Tide have won seven of the last eight games in the series.
For the Longhorns and Aggies, it will be their first meeting since 2011 — a 27-25 Texas win — as Texas A&M joined the SEC the following season.
The SEC made it a priority to maintain the historical rivalries in 2024. Alabama will play at Tennessee and LSU, for instance, while Texas A&M will face LSU at home and Arkansas at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
Also, Texas will travel to Arkansas in a meeting of old Southwest Conference rivals, and Oklahoma and Texas will continue their annual rivalry at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. Georgia will keep its annual rivalries with Auburn, Florida and Tennessee.
All 14 existing SEC schools will play either Oklahoma or Texas in 2024, with sources telling ESPN that Georgia will visit Texas and Alabama will travel to face Oklahoma.
One of the concerns for SEC teams about going to nine conference games involved tougher nonconference games already scheduled for that season and how that might affect their chances of landing a spot in an expanded 12-team playoff with a potential extra loss. For example, Texas A&M opens the 2024 season against Notre Dame, and Alabama plays at Wisconsin the second week of the season. Also, Florida plays Florida State every year, South Carolina faces Clemson and Kentucky faces Louisville.