The Florida Gators and LSU Tigers will not play this week in Gainesville, the Southeastern Conference announced Thursday, as Hurricane Matthews barrels down on the east coast of Florida.
“The timing of this storm on a Friday and the uncertainly of its aftermath in the ensuing days make it particularly difficult to project the conditions for the remainder of the weekend as well as the opportunity for travel of teams and fans to or from Gainesville and other cities in Florida,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said in a release. “I am appreciative of the cooperation of our universities on this matter.”
“Our thoughts and prayers are going to go in toward everybody who may be impacted by a storm we haven’t seen in this area in a long, long time,” Foley said. “Certainly want to make sure we say that up front. But I also want to make sure up front that I commend commissioner Sankey on this decision. Not an easy one. A tough one.”
How did it come to this?
Hurricane Matthew’s ever-changing and unpredictable pattern left Florida guessing.
“I’ve been in constant communication with the Southeastern Conference since Tuesday. As late as yesterday afternoon we spoke with the league and thought there was a very, very good chance we could play it on Saturday,” said Foley. “Maybe adjust the game time on Saturday, but really thought that we were going to be able to play.”
LSU offered to host the Gators, as well as pay for the Gators’ travel expenses. In 2015, due to flooding in South Carolina, the Gamecocks moved their home game against LSU to Baton Rouge, providing precedence for Florida potentially moving the game away from Gainesville. That was never a consideration from Florida’s end, with Foley calling the move to Gainesville
“To try to put a road trip together of 150-plus people in a day and half, not knowing the condition of the roads, not knowing the conditions of the airports, trying to get equipment out there,” Foley said. “Again, not in the best interest of safety, not in the best interest of people that would be involved in that trip. To me and our staff and obviously commissioner Sankey pales in comparison worrying about getting out to Baton Rouge when people in this state may be dealing with stuff that is far more significant, far more serious.”
As of writing this, Florida has 52 players from counties that are under a hurricane warning and Matthew has moved from a category three to a four (130-156 miles an hour).
“One other part of this conversation that people don’t realize is we have players on our team whose families are being impacted by what’s potentially going to happen here,” Foley said. “It goes back to what I said earlier. We are going to make sure people are safe. We’re going to make sure we do the right things for the right reasons. We’d love to play this football game. I’ll go back to what I said earlier, today, the decision was made on our end that we could not play this in Gainesville on Saturday or Sunday nor would we want to put our football team on the road under the same set of circumstances.”
Now the Southeastern Conference will handle when the game, or if the game will be made up, as the teams do not share a bye week. Florida offered up November 19 as option. That would require Florida to buy out Presbyterian for what Foley says is just shy of $500,000 dollars and LSU would have to buy out South Alabama for a reported $1.5 million dollars. The SEC has an umbrella insurance policy that covers all 14 league schools for “lost revenue” in extreme cases.
LSU has been unwilling to agree to that date, the Tigers’ last home game of the season. LSU has a four game stretch of Alabama, at Arkansas, South Alabama and at Texas A&M. The Tigers do not want to lose out on the revenue that a home football game brings to the city of Baton Rouge nor do they wish to play three consecutive road games to end the season.
The SEC will work with both schools and come up with a scenario, if there is one to be found, to make up the game.
“I told this to the Commissioner and I told this to LSU; 100 percent behind whatever scenario they can come up with that allows this game to be played,” Foley said. “If the 19th is one of those days that allows it to work the Gators will be there and LSU will be there. If there’s some other scenario out there, and I have no idea what the league may be working on, we’re going to be 100 percent behind playing. This is not an issue about Florida not wanting to play LSU. I think and I hope that everyone understands that.”