Georgia hits the road after final SEC home game

— -- ATHENS, Ga. -- The Georgia Bulldogs will celebrate homecoming on Saturday. Actually, it's more like a going-away party. After the No. 12 Bulldogs host lowly Vanderbilt, there will no more Southeastern Conference games at Sanford Stadium this season. And it's only mid-October. "This is weird," quarterback David Greene said. "It's been nice so far, with all these home games. But we would have liked it better if the road games were spread out more." Georgia has played only one road game so far. Now it's time for payback. After Saturday, the Bulldogs (4-1, 2-1) will play their next four games on the road -- the longest streak outside the hedges in nearly four decades. The Bulldogs finally return home for their regular-season finale on Nov. 27, meeting state rival Georgia Tech. The Bulldogs' trek begins Oct. 23 at Arkansas, where they have won their two previous visits. The following week, Georgia sets out for Jacksonville to meet No. 22 Florida in the "World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party." The Gators have won 13 of the last 14 meetings between the schools, all but two of them held in the stadium formerly known as the Gator Bowl. While technically a neutral game, with tickets split right down the middle, Jacksonville is much closer to Gainesville than it is to Athens. On Nov. 6, Georgia travels to Kentucky to meet the struggling Wildcats. The Bulldogs are 12-3 at Commonwealth Stadium, their last loss coming in 1996. If the Bulldogs still have only one defeat at that point, a third straight trip to the SEC championship game could be on the line when they play at No. 4 Auburn on Nov. 13. Two years ago, Georgia clinched its first Eastern Division title at Jordan-Hare Stadium, beating the Tigers 24-21 on Greene's fourth-down touchdown pass to Michael Johnson with 85 seconds remaining. This will be Georgia's longest stretch of games outside Athens since 1965, when Vince Dooley's second team played at Florida State, Kentucky and North Carolina before meeting Florida in Jacksonville. The Bulldogs went 1-3 in those games. This year's schedule was an aberration, caused by the normal shuffling of opponents in the SEC. Each school plays three teams from the opposite division -- one every year, the others on a rotating basis. For the Bulldogs, Arkansas replaced Alabama as a Western Division opponent, but the game was placed later in the season. The result: a monthlong stretch without a home game. Coach Mark Richt would have preferred a more balanced schedule, instead of opening with five of six at home and ending with four of five on the road. "That would have made more sense," he said. "Even if we had won every home game so far, we would still have a tough stretch of games coming up. Now, we've got to win the rest of our games, going into some very hostile environments."