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Florida Gators and Cal Bears cancel future home-and-home

Untitled designby:Nick de la Torre•07/10/24•

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GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The Florida Gators and California Golden Bears have canceled a home-and-home that was scheduled for the 2026-27 seasons. Brett McMurphy of Action Sports was the first to report. Florida and Cal had agreed to the two games back in 2020. The Gators were to host the Golden Bears in Gainesville on Sept. 19, 2026, and UF will travel to Berkeley, Calif., for a non-conference contest on Sept. 4, 2027.

Florida and Cal first met on the gridiron on Sept. 14, 1974, when the two schools opened the season in Gainesville with a 21-17 Gators victory. Florida leads the series, 2-0, as the two teams last met in Tampa to open the 1980 season in a 41-13 UF win.

So much has been made of the Florida Gators’ 2024 football schedule. Non-conference games were scheduled so far in advance that Athletic Directors couldn’t have foreseen the current landscape of college football and conference expansion. This year, 11 of Florida’s 12 games will come against Power 5 opponents, including non-conference games with ACC foes Miami and Florida State, as well as a game against the UCF, who joined the Big 12 prior to the 2023 season.

Outside of FCS Samford, the Gators face strictly in-state opponents in their non-conference schedule including UCF, which Stricklin even admitted may be overzealous.

“UCF was not in the Big 12 when we put that game on the schedule, so that’s one probably that we might have handled differently or put them in a different year had we known,” Stricklin said at SEC meetings in Destin.

This season, the SEC will welcome the Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners into the league. While the SEC is not expanding its conference schedule, there have been talks about changing the current eight-game model to a nine-game conference schedule.

“At Florida playing tough schedules is not new, Gators have played Florida State every year non-conference, we play eight SEC games every year, and we have played Miami periodically,” Stricklin explained. “We played Miami and Florida State in the same year both back in 2019, so just five years ago. So it’s not unusual for us to have a tough non-conference schedule.”

Florida Gators and future SEC scheduling

The Gators are not the only SEC team to cancel a marquee home-and-home matchup. Georgia and UCLA (ACC) announced they would cancel its home-and-home which was scheduled for 2025 and 2026.

The Gators still have several other marquee non-conference games scheduled, as well as non-conference games scheduled out all the way into 2033.

2025: vs South Florida, at Miami, vs FAMU, vs Florida State

2026: at N.C. State, vs Campbell, at Florida State

2027: vs Florida State

2028: vs Colorado, at Arizona State, at Florida State

2029: at Colorado, Florida State

2030: at UCF, at Florida State

2031: vs Arizona State, at Notre Dame, Florida State

2032: Notre Dame, N.C. State, at Florida State

2033: vs UCF, Florida State


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