UGA got a lot of props this week beefing up its football schedule with a home-and-home series with Oklahoma.

It’s a high-profile series that will attract national attention from the media, fans and recruits when the games are played. The only issue is that it will be a minute or two before the games are finally played.

Georgia plays at Oklahoma in 2023, which seems far away but not too far away.

Oklahoma will return the favor by playing the Bulldogs in Athens, Ga., in the 2031 season – which seems like a another lifetime away.

UGA coach Kirby Smart spoke candidly about the Oklahoma series on Wednesday, agreeing that the second game was “long way out,” but also explaining the reasons behind it, during an interview on the WJOX 94.5 FM program “The Roundtable.”

“Here’s the problem, if you don’t do that, you won’t have one of those games,” Smart said. “So for us, 2023, we just got Oklahoma, we couldn’t find anybody in the country that didn’t have a game in 2023. And you think, ‘Well, that’s four years out.’ That’s like right now because the scheduling is all done. You see Alabama is doing the same thing, Clemson is doing the same thing. If you don’t get your games further out, you won’t have games.

“There’s no opening between there, we had a weird gap between 2023 and 2031 and everything in between was booked. The only option was 2031, I agree it’s a long way out but you can’t not do it that way because they go out and get other teams. The only other option we had for 2023 was to go out and play a team we could have paid to come in. Then I’d be sitting here ‘Why are you playing all these cupcakes?’ You know what I mean? So for us, we want to go play the best. We think it’s going to help with College Football Playoff because strength of schedule is a major factor and we want that.”

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