Florida Gators/LSU reschedule make up game

The Southeastern Conference has made a decision and the Florida Gators and LSU Tigers will play this season.

The Gators will travel to Baton Rouge on November 19, losing its best home game of the 2016 season and will finish with back-to-back road games at LSU and at Florida State. In exchange for moving its schedule home date on November 19 to Baton Rouge the Gators will host LSU in 2017 (previously schedule for Baton Rouge) and again, as normally scheduled in 2018.

“It was important for us to come to a resolution. Each university had its own set of concerns throughout this process, however existing SEC regulations did not provide an avenue to resolve conflicting issues in a more timely manner,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said in a release. “As I have repeatedly said, this game needed to be played. In the end, I want to give credit to the University of Florida for making concessions to move this year’s game to Baton Rouge.”

The SEC Commissioner’s Regulations require all league teams to play the full eight-game conference schedule in order to be eligible to compete for a division title and play in the SEC Championship game. This left the Gators and Tigers with not much wiggle room.

“The conference office asked us to find a solution in working with LSU, yet LSU was never a true partner in discussions,” Florida Athletic Director Jeremy Foley said.

This means the Gators will buyout its contract with Presbyterian (~$500,000 dollars) and LSU will buyout its contract with South Alabama (~$1.5 million dollars). The Southeastern conference has an insurance policy that should be able to cover both of the buyouts, as well as a reported $7.8 million in ticket sales from both games.

“Lastly, I send thanks to Sun Belt Conference Commissioner Karl Benson and his membership which worked in collaboration and a great spirit of cooperation in presenting options as we worked through this process,” Sankey said.

Monday, Jim McElwain responded to the notion that the Gators were trying to avoid playing LSU because it would help Florida’s chances of making it to the SEC Championship game.

“I’ll go play them anywhere,” McElwain said. “I don’t get where all this is coming from. The one thing we never do is back down, and if you understand the circumstances you understand what occurred, I get it. But to ever think we wouldn’t play them anywhere, that’s ridiculous.”

Nick de la Torre
A South Florida native, Nick developed a passion for all things sports at a very young age. His love for baseball was solidified when he saw Al Leiter’s no-hitter for the Marlins live in May of 1996. He was able to play baseball in college but quickly realized there isn’t much of a market for short, slow outfielders that hit around the Mendoza line. Wanting to continue with sports in some capacity he studied journalism at the University of Central Florida. Nick got his first start in the business as an intern for a website covering all things related to the NFL draft before spending two seasons covering the Florida football team at Bleacher Report. That job led him to GatorCountry. When he isn’t covering Gator sports, Nick enjoys hitting way too many shots on the golf course, attempting to keep up with his favorite t.v. shows and watching the Heat, Dolphins and Marlins. Follow him on twitter @NickdelatorreGC

2 COMMENTS

    • According to Paul Finebaum, and many others, Foley looks childish right now. Of course, when Alleva was making similar claims last week while people, including Florida athlete’s families, were in a hurricane these same people were calling Florida scared. I think this is a case of *The Rule* being implemented. A guy I know and myself refer to *The Rule* a lot: The Rule – Whatever Florida does is incorrect in the eyes of the media and opposing fans [ex. Spurrier ran up the score. Tom Osborne simply runs his offense]. I think this is just another example of that. The fact that Foley, who never uses the media as a platform to question, hammer someone, or fire shots, came out and actually did put the hammer down tells me all I need to know about this situation.