Florida adds home-and-home with Arizona State

The Florida Gators continue to bolster their future football schedule with other non-conference Power 5 opponents.

On Tuesday Florida announced two games with Arizona State. Florida will travel to Tempe to play the Sun Devils in 2028 and Arizona State will return the favor and play in Gainesville in 2031.

Adding Arizona State in those years gives Florida three non-conference Power 5 opponents in each of those seasons. The Gators will host Colorado while traveling to Arizona State and Florida State in 2028. In 2031 Florida will host FSU and Arizona State while traveling to Austin to play the Texas Longhorns.

Scott Stricklin has made great efforts to improve Florida’s non-conference schedule. Attendance is down throughout collegiate and professional sports and Stricklin believes that scheduling bigger, more enticing games can help that. Florida has games scheduled with six Power 5 teams, not including the already annual matchup with Florida State.

Florida has series with USF (2021, 2022, 2025), Utah (2022, 2023), Miami (2024, 2025), Colorado (2028, 2029) and Texas (2030, 2031) to go along with the new Arizona State contract.

Future Power Five Non-Conference Opponents (by year)
• 2019: Florida State
• 2020: at Florida State
• 2021: Florida State
• 2022: Utah, at Florida State
• 2023: at Utah
• 2024: Miami
• 2025: at Miami
• 2028: Colorado, at Arizona State
• 2029: at Colorado
• 2030: Texas
• 2031: at Texas, Arizona State

 

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