The LSU-Florida game that was postponed last Saturday due to Hurricane Matthew has been rescheduled for November 19 with a twist. Instead of hosting, the Gators will travel to Baton Rouge and then host LSU next season.
Moving the game to LSU keeps the Tigers from playing three road games in a 13-day stretch, as they are scheduled to play at Arkansas on Nov. 12 and at Texas A&M on November 24.
According to Florida athletics director Jeremy Foley, LSU AD Joe Alleva did not make the rescheduling process easy. The Tigers did not want to give up their November 19 home game against South Alabama.
“We made this decision to play the game in Baton Rouge,” Foley said in a release. “The conference office asked us to find a solution in working with LSU, yet LSU was never a true partner in our discussions. The Southeastern Conference offered some other solutions, and the LSU administration made it clear that they were unwilling to consider other reasonable options.”
According to SEC regulations, a team must play all eight conference games to be eligible for the conference title game.
“It was important for us to come to a resolution,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said in a statement. “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. 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.”
In order to open up the November 19 date, LSU and Florida had to buy out South Alabama and Presbyterian, their respective opponents for that week.
To be fair, Alleva was reasonably ticked off. If Florida had taken up LSU’s offer of playing the game in Tiger Stadium last week, this debacle would never have happened. Instead, Florida waited too long to cancel, and now LSU has to spend $1.5 million to get rid of a game that would likely have been an easy win during an otherwise difficult SEC stretch.
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