Former Auburn OL laments loss of several key SEC West rivals in 2024

The SEC dropped a bombshell on June 14 with the release of the conference’s revamped schedule in 2024 after conference realignment brings Texas and Oklahoma to the conference. A division-less conference meant the loss of key annual rivalries on the schedule with only one conference opponent being played every year. But now that it has happened, former Auburn football offensive lineman Cole Cubelic is in disbelief that the Tigers won’t be facing LSU, Ole Miss, or Mississippi State in 14 months’ time.

A rivalry with Ole Miss was brewing given Lane Kiffin’s false AU hiring controversy and Hugh Freeze’s past in his native Oxford, Mississippi running the Rebels and eventually being run out of town himself. Mississippi State is one of Auburn’s most-played rivals in program history. An increasingly meaningful “Tiger Bowl” between Auburn and LSU will be sidelined as the two face Missouri just as much in far-less impactful “Tiger Bowls.”

Things are changing in a big way in 2024 when Auburn’s conference slate includes games at Alabama, Arkansas, at Georgia, at Kentucky, at Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, and Vanderbilt, and then again in 2025 when they face Bama and seven different teams. It’s unclear if the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry is still an annual matchup, though it will likely be played as a non-conference game in the same way UNC-Wake Forest has been when it’s not the two programs’ turn to play per conference rotation.

Auburn football facing easier schedule in 2024

The bright side of the drastic shift for Auburn’s 2024 draw is the schedule getting much easier. Rivalry games against the last three champions, Georgia and Alabama, still offer final-boss level challenges, but having Kentucky, Missouri, and Vanderbilt, not to mention a thus far unproven Oklahoma team post-Lincoln Riley, could make a path to one of the 12 College Football Playoff spots significantly easier to get on.

Perennially the owners of the nation’s hardest schedule, AU gets a reprieve with how things shake out in 2024 and beyond.

War damn to that.