The SEC-biased people are not going to like it when College GameDay announces that it’s Georgia-Alabama in Week 5.

With both teams having a bye this weekend, this date comes early, along with the fact that GameDay will have been to an SEC campus a total of four times by the end of September, including this Saturday’s trip to Oklahoma for the Josh Heupel meet in Norman – a place the ESPN show hasn’t visited with fans since 2012.

This shouldn’t be a shocking revelation to the decision-makers at GameDay. The revelation isn’t that GameDay got off to an SEC-heavy start in the first year of its new TV contract, which no longer broadcasts Big Ten games; it’s that GameDay doesn’t care if you or anyone else knows about it.

How do we know? Aside from 2020 with delayed schedules (ACC and Big 12 started before the other Power 5 conferences), this is the first time since 2008 that GameDay has selected 3 campuses from a specific conference before October. That year, 2008, GameDay made trips to Gainesville for Miami-Florida in Week 2, LSU-Auburn in Week 4, and Alabama-Georgia in Athens in Week 5. All of the games were hosted by top-10 teams, with 2 of them being a battle of top-10 teams, but that’s pretty irrelevant.

Something else happened this year. Just before the 2008 season, ESPN and the SEC agreed to a 15-year contract worth more than $2 billion.

The only other season where GameDay displayed this much “favoritism” over conferences early in the season was the 1999 season, when the show was shown on three different Big Ten campuses before October. However, that was the first year GameDay had no studio shows/off weeks, and the show was still establishing itself.

You can bet it’s no coincidence that the self-assured national show has only allowed this to happen once since then. Well, I guess it’s happened twice now. Neither case was a coincidence.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean ESPN only cares about the SEC now. It just means that with this new partnership, where ESPN and the SEC enter into an exclusive relationship, the network doesn’t have to worry about how balanced its GameDay decisions are.

Big Noon Kickoff, of course, chooses its targets based on its conference partners. Since FOX’s pregame show launched in 2019, Big Noon has never been to an SEC or ACC campus. Why? FOX had rights to the Big Ten, Big 12 and the Pac-12. No one accuses Big Noon of having a bias toward those conferences, although it also prides itself on being a “national” show.

To GameDay’s credit, it has already gone to a Big Ten campus this year for Texas-Michigan. There will likely be more instances of GameDay going to Big Ten schools, even though ESPN and the Big Ten are no longer partners.

But given the way Big Noon Kickoff works, it begs the question: Why does GameDay need to be impartial about its destinations?

The short answer is no. The more accurate answer is that it has a few things to fall back on. First of all, it doesn’t want to just go where Big Noon Kickoff is, which makes sense. It’s a crowd-pleasing pregame show. Ideally, you’d have as little split viewership as possible, unless the game can support that, like Texas-Michigan.

In a strange way, GameDay might even be able to more to pay attention to the best game rather than forego a top-15 matchup because ESPN is afraid of upsetting one of its other major TV partners in the conference, which now only includes the SEC, ACC and Big 12. So far, it’s not like they’ve attended mediocre SEC games:

• Week 0: No. 10 Florida State vs. Georgia Tech (in Dublin)
• Week 1: No. 7 Notre Dame at No. 25 Texas A&M
• Week 2: No. 3 Texas at No. 10 Michigan
• Week 3: No. 16 LSU at South Carolina
• Week 4: No. 6 Tennessee at No. 15 Oklahoma
• Week 5: To be announced (but expected to be No. 2 Georgia vs. No. 4 Alabama)

Yes, some scoffed at LSU-South Carolina. OK, so what was the better option? The only other top-25 matchup on Saturday – Arizona-Kansas State was on Friday – was No. 24 Boston College against No. 6 Mizzou. Some argued, however, that Oregon-Oregon State should have gotten that treatment, even though it was an 18.5-point game played at a school that was just being eclipsed by its own conference. Big Noon was going to be at Alabama-Wisconsin anyway, so that didn’t make sense either.

The irony is that GameDay destination pedants dismiss the show because it doesn’t make enough trips to the small schools or those who would appreciate it more. Also of note is that GameDay in Columbia was electric … because it was the first visit there in 10 years.

Saturday’s destination will also be electric, in part because of the reunion of Josh Heupel and Oklahoma, but also because GameDay is heading to Norman with fans for the first time since 2012. And yet, rest assured, some will criticize that decision or the likely decision to go to Georgia and Alabama in Week 5.

Yes, that’s SEC-heavy. You know what’s also SEC-heavy? The top of the AP Poll. It has 6 SEC teams in the top 7 and 9 teams in the top 25. Wouldn’t it be odd if a conference with that kind of representation in the AP Poll had equal representation on GameDay? What would be odd is if, in the first year that ESPN had exclusive SEC rights and no Big Ten rights, the network opted for a Big Ten-heavy start instead.

In 2008, GameDay made five trips to SEC campuses. The 2014 season topped that with six trips. It remains to be seen if that will be topped in 2024. Keep in mind that attending Texas-Oklahoma or Florida-Georgia doesn’t count toward the SEC total, as we’re limiting this to on-campus shows. Even in the expanded SEC with this new ESPN deal, 6 might be the maximum.

On the other hand, we live in new times. ESPN seems to welcome them.

Call it SEC bias if you want. GameDay doesn’t have to worry about it anymore.