Impact Analysis: What the rescheduling of Florida-LSU means
Landon Watnick | Beat Writer
On Thursday, the SEC announced that Florida and LSU would reschedule their postponed game at the hands of Hurricane Matthew for a Nov. 19 matchup in Baton Rouge, while Florida would host LSU back-to-back years in 2017 and 2018. Meanwhile, Florida and LSU’s original respective Nov. 19 opponents in Presbyterian and South Alabama will be bought out.
The 2016 Florida-LSU game will be played no later than 3:30 p.m. ET.
Now, Inside the Gators takes a look at what all of this means with an Impact Analysis.
USA Today Sports
THE RAMIFICATIONS OF THE DECISION
Ultimately, this is a compromise that hurts Florida in the short-term but sets it up nicely long-term. The Gators must play four of their final five 2016 regular-season games now away from home – against Georgia in Jacksonville on Oct. 29, at Arkansas on Nov. 5, at LSU on Nov. 19 and at Florida State on Nov. 26. In this situation, Florida loses two home games – a reported overall loss of $7.8 million in projected revenue. Still, the SEC should cover at least a good portion of that with its lost-revenue insurance policy for all 14 schools.
However, the 2017 home slate might be one of the best in UF’s school history, with matchups against Tennessee, LSU, Texas A&M and Florida State for the season ticket holders. 2016’s, meanwhile, has been and will turn out to be ultimately unappetizing, with just UMass, Kentucky, North Texas, Missouri and South Carolina playing at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.
LSU’s final month of 2016 becomes more difficult as well, with Alabama, Arkansas, Florida and Texas A&M on the slate, but the Tigers play two of those four games at home.
The SEC, which handled this entire situation pretty poorly looking at it in retrospect, asserted in its press release: "The SEC Commissioner’s Regulations requires each football team play all eight Conference games in a season in order to be eligible to compete for a divisional title and play in the SEC Championship Game. Had the game not been rescheduled, Florida and LSU would have been ineligible to compete for the SEC title this season."
Regardless, worried Tennessee fans can finally quiet down now.
For Presbyterian and South Alabama, a potential matchup between both schools on the Nov. 19 date could be in the works. Florida bought out Presbyterian for less than $500,000, while LSU bought out South Alabama for $1.5 million.
THE PUBLIC PERCEPTION OF FLORIDA-LSU
Over the past week, Florida has received plenty of unwarranted criticism for not playing the game – with a lot of it coming from LSU and Tennessee fans (and surprisingly enough, LSU columnists driving the Tigers’ narrative). People claimed that Florida was afraid to play LSU in Baton Rouge and wanted a “bye week" to give its injured players some rest.
That couldn’t be further from the fact. Florida hasn’t, and will never be, afraid to play another opponent. Simply put, for multiple logistical reasons holding Florida-LSU in Gainesville wouldn’t have been possible last weekend, with first responders, police and others who staff the games dispersed to surrounding communities. Moving the game to Baton Rouge that weekend would have been a logistical nightmare for the Gators in such a short window.
More criticism has come Florida’s way for delaying a decision until Thursday of that week, but hurricanes are difficult to predict and the Gators thought at a point last week that there could still be a shot at playing the game sometime that weekend.
“Nineteen deaths, 2.5 million people without power,” McElwain said Monday. “Families in dire needs. Obviously, they don’t know me, they don’t know the Florida Gators. They don’t know our players. Dodging the game? Wow. Obviously, those people, man. Obviously, I have grown up in Montana and never been through a hurricane, but I think a lot of people around here have and have seen the devastation. How anybody could even think that way is beyond me.”
With Florida proving now it isn’t afraid to play in Baton Rouge, the ignorant national criticism about its part in this whole fiasco should hopefully die down a bit.
All in all, LSU athletic director Joe Alleva doesn’t come out of this whole situation looking too good - although he got what he wanted. He notoriously asserted throughout this past week that LSU would play a home game on Nov. 19 no matter what – and in the process made reaching a compromise more difficult than it had to be. (Keep in mind, Alleva has never been a huge fan of the Florida-LSU series).
Retiring Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley took a parting shot at Alleva on Thursday.
"We made this decision to play the game in Baton Rouge," Foley said. "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."
Looking at how the SEC handled this whole situation, change certainly needs to be in order. The conference’s press release mentioned such Thursday.
“In addition, the Presidents and Chancellors have established the expectation for existing Conference policy to be revised to better define the process for completing postponed or interrupted contests and to grant authority to the Commissioner to determine the date and location of future games that may need to be rescheduled if the two involved institutions cannot mutually identify a date,” the league wrote.
------
Thank you for reading this Inside the Gators article. To discuss it, please visit the Alligator Alley Forum.
Landon Watnick | Beat Writer
On Thursday, the SEC announced that Florida and LSU would reschedule their postponed game at the hands of Hurricane Matthew for a Nov. 19 matchup in Baton Rouge, while Florida would host LSU back-to-back years in 2017 and 2018. Meanwhile, Florida and LSU’s original respective Nov. 19 opponents in Presbyterian and South Alabama will be bought out.
The 2016 Florida-LSU game will be played no later than 3:30 p.m. ET.
Now, Inside the Gators takes a look at what all of this means with an Impact Analysis.
USA Today Sports
THE RAMIFICATIONS OF THE DECISION
Ultimately, this is a compromise that hurts Florida in the short-term but sets it up nicely long-term. The Gators must play four of their final five 2016 regular-season games now away from home – against Georgia in Jacksonville on Oct. 29, at Arkansas on Nov. 5, at LSU on Nov. 19 and at Florida State on Nov. 26. In this situation, Florida loses two home games – a reported overall loss of $7.8 million in projected revenue. Still, the SEC should cover at least a good portion of that with its lost-revenue insurance policy for all 14 schools.
However, the 2017 home slate might be one of the best in UF’s school history, with matchups against Tennessee, LSU, Texas A&M and Florida State for the season ticket holders. 2016’s, meanwhile, has been and will turn out to be ultimately unappetizing, with just UMass, Kentucky, North Texas, Missouri and South Carolina playing at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.
LSU’s final month of 2016 becomes more difficult as well, with Alabama, Arkansas, Florida and Texas A&M on the slate, but the Tigers play two of those four games at home.
The SEC, which handled this entire situation pretty poorly looking at it in retrospect, asserted in its press release: "The SEC Commissioner’s Regulations requires each football team play all eight Conference games in a season in order to be eligible to compete for a divisional title and play in the SEC Championship Game. Had the game not been rescheduled, Florida and LSU would have been ineligible to compete for the SEC title this season."
Regardless, worried Tennessee fans can finally quiet down now.
For Presbyterian and South Alabama, a potential matchup between both schools on the Nov. 19 date could be in the works. Florida bought out Presbyterian for less than $500,000, while LSU bought out South Alabama for $1.5 million.
THE PUBLIC PERCEPTION OF FLORIDA-LSU
Over the past week, Florida has received plenty of unwarranted criticism for not playing the game – with a lot of it coming from LSU and Tennessee fans (and surprisingly enough, LSU columnists driving the Tigers’ narrative). People claimed that Florida was afraid to play LSU in Baton Rouge and wanted a “bye week" to give its injured players some rest.
That couldn’t be further from the fact. Florida hasn’t, and will never be, afraid to play another opponent. Simply put, for multiple logistical reasons holding Florida-LSU in Gainesville wouldn’t have been possible last weekend, with first responders, police and others who staff the games dispersed to surrounding communities. Moving the game to Baton Rouge that weekend would have been a logistical nightmare for the Gators in such a short window.
More criticism has come Florida’s way for delaying a decision until Thursday of that week, but hurricanes are difficult to predict and the Gators thought at a point last week that there could still be a shot at playing the game sometime that weekend.
“Nineteen deaths, 2.5 million people without power,” McElwain said Monday. “Families in dire needs. Obviously, they don’t know me, they don’t know the Florida Gators. They don’t know our players. Dodging the game? Wow. Obviously, those people, man. Obviously, I have grown up in Montana and never been through a hurricane, but I think a lot of people around here have and have seen the devastation. How anybody could even think that way is beyond me.”
With Florida proving now it isn’t afraid to play in Baton Rouge, the ignorant national criticism about its part in this whole fiasco should hopefully die down a bit.
All in all, LSU athletic director Joe Alleva doesn’t come out of this whole situation looking too good - although he got what he wanted. He notoriously asserted throughout this past week that LSU would play a home game on Nov. 19 no matter what – and in the process made reaching a compromise more difficult than it had to be. (Keep in mind, Alleva has never been a huge fan of the Florida-LSU series).
Retiring Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley took a parting shot at Alleva on Thursday.
"We made this decision to play the game in Baton Rouge," Foley said. "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."
Looking at how the SEC handled this whole situation, change certainly needs to be in order. The conference’s press release mentioned such Thursday.
“In addition, the Presidents and Chancellors have established the expectation for existing Conference policy to be revised to better define the process for completing postponed or interrupted contests and to grant authority to the Commissioner to determine the date and location of future games that may need to be rescheduled if the two involved institutions cannot mutually identify a date,” the league wrote.
------
Thank you for reading this Inside the Gators article. To discuss it, please visit the Alligator Alley Forum.
