By now, the ink should be drying on the 2024 calendars of Auburn football fans as the Tigers’ 2024 slate of games was finally unveiled Wednesday night.

In what will be Auburn’s second season under head coach Hugh Freeze, the Tigers’ eight-team conference slate features visits to Georgia, Missouri, Kentucky and Alabama, while Auburn will host Arkansas, Oklahoma, Vanderbilt and Texas A&M.

Jordan-Hare Stadium will also see Auburn’s full non-conference slate, which features visits from Alabama A&M, New Mexico, Cal and Louisiana-Monroe.

For a look at Auburn’s entire 2024 schedule, including dates, click here.

In the meantime, here are three storylines from our first look at the Tigers’ 2024 schedule.

Oklahoma gets its first taste of Jordan-Hare Stadium in Week 5

The Oklahoma Sooners will play their first conference game in the SEC on Sept. 21 as they host the Tennessee Volunteers. However, the Sooners won’t experience their first road game in the SEC until Week 5, when they visit the Auburn Tigers on Sept. 28.

And that sure is a warm welcome to playing on the road in the SEC.

Though Oklahoma and Auburn have previously met twice — once in 1971 and once in 2016 — the Sooners and Tigers have never played on each other’s campuses, meaning Oklahoma will be making its first ever appearance on The Plains in 2024.

The Sooners own the series history with a 2-0 record over the Tigers.

Given Auburn fans — like the rest of the SEC — have been anxiously awaiting the inclusion of Oklahoma and Texas, Jordan-Hare Stadium, which was referred to as a “House of Horrors” for opposing teams during Wednesday night’s schedule release show, is bound to be filled to the brim on Sept. 28.

Tigers open 2024 season with cozy, five-game home slate… followed by tough road test in Athens

Auburn will have the opportunity to get comfortable to open the season as it hosts its first five games at Jordan-Hare Stadium.

In Week 1 on Aug. 31, the Tigers will host an in-state matchup as the Alabama A&M Bulldogs come to The Plains. The following Saturday, Sept. 7, the Cal Golden Bears will visit the Tigers in a rematch of 2023′s Week 2 matchup, while New Mexico will come to Auburn in what will be the first meeting between the Lobos and Tigers in Week 3.

Come Week 4, Auburn will open conference play as it hosts Arkansas, followed by Oklahoma’s visit to Jordan-Hare Stadium on Sept. 28.

The Tigers last opened its season with a five-game homestand in 2022, when it went 3-2 with loses to Penn State and LSU.

And if that memory isn’t reason enough for Auburn to stay on its toes during that stretch of home games, the fact that the Tigers follow the stretch with a visit to Athens to take on the Georgia Bulldogs in Week 6 should do the trick.

After hosting the then-top-ranked Bulldogs during Week 5 of the 2023 season in what was an instant classic, the Tigers will visit Sanford Stadium on Oct. 5, 2024.

Auburn is 18-17 against Georgia when playing away from Jordan-Hare Stadium and the Tigers will be looking to snap a seven-game losing streak when it visits Athens next fall.

Auburn’s midseason road-game stretch is no joke

There’s no two ways about it: Auburn’s first road game — a visit to Georgia for the “Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry” on Oct. 5 — is quite the baptism by fire to get the season’s slate of road games underway.

Fortunately, win, lose or draw, when the Tigers return from Athens, Ga., they’ll have the first of their two off weeks to look forward to. However, on the other side of that bye week stands a pair of tough road tests for Auburn, which will visit Missouri on Oct. 19, immediately followed by a trip to Kentucky on Oct. 26.

Auburn’s trip to Columbia, Missouri will be the Tigers’ second trip to Faurot Field in program history. The last time Auburn visited Missouri in a battle of the Tigers was on Sept. 23, 2017 — a game that saw Auburn dismantle Missouri 51-14.

However, come next season, it’s likely Auburn will be eyeing a much tougher Missouri team as Eli Drinkwitz led Missouri to a 10-2 regular season record and a top-10 finish in the 2023 AP Poll.

Following Auburn’s trip to Columbia, Missouri, Freeze and the Tigers will quickly hit the road again — this time to head to Lexington, Ky., where they’ll see Mark Stoops and the Kentucky Wildcats.

In 2023, Stoops and the ‘Cats went 7-5 through the regular season and 4-3 from their home stadium, Kroger Field.

Auburn’s trip to Lexington on Oct. 26 will be the Tigers’ first since 2015, when Auburn narrowly beat Kentucky 30-27. Fortunately for the Tigers, if history is any indication, Kroger Field has been a friendly place to Auburn, which has escaped with a win in 13 of its 17 visits in program history.

However, like the case with Missouri, Stoops has helped the trajectory of the Kentucky football program rise over the last few years, meaning next year’s visit to Lexington is nothing to turn a blind eye to.