UGA Starts This Week. And That's Stupid.

UGA starts this week.

Yeah, that's stupid.

UGA classes begin August 11, the earliest of any school in the SEC. By far. Check it out below:

8/11: UGA (yes, way too early)
8/16: Auburn and Mississippi State
8/17: Alabama and Tennessee
8/18: South Carolina
8/22: Arkansas, Ole Miss, and Florida
8/24: Kentucky, LSU, Missouri, and Vanderbilt

Wow, so four schools start two weeks later than us. Our 8/11 start is the earliest I can find in the history of UGA, but I'm only going back to 2005. In one previous year we began on 8/12, but nothing as early as 8/11. And of course back in saner days of the quarter system we didn't begin until mid-September -- as it should be.

To make things worse, we start on 8/10 next year. Effing insane. And again on a Thursday. And again, stupid.

I wonder whether UGA is opening classes earlier than any other major university in the country. That would take forever to figure out and I'm not about to try, but my casual eyeballing of the data says this is the case. But for fun let's look at a few of UGA's "aspirational" institutions, schools we'd like to be like. When do they start? Well, UNC and Virginia are on the list and they begin classes on 8/23. Penn State and University of Texas are aspirationals too, and they open 8/22.

Saving myself the time, let's just argue that UGA is opening earlier than any other major university and ask ourselves, WTF?