What will SEC expansion mean for the Florida Gators' future schedule?

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The upcoming 2023 football season will, for all intents and purposes, be the final season with divisions in the SEC. What will that mean for the Florida Gators and their annual rivalries with the Tennessee Volunteers, LSU Tigers, and Georgia Bulldogs?

With the Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners set to join the SEC, how will the league handle future scheduling? What will that mean for games Florida fans have grown accustomed to? To decades of tradition.

The league has kicked the future scheduling can for more than a year. With spring meetings scheduled at the end of this month, future scheduling will again dominate the talks and headlines from Destin during spring meetings.

What are the future scheduling options? What do they mean for the Gators? How does Billy Napier feel about the future of his program in this regard?

There are only two options

SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said that the league had pursued and looked at hundreds of potential schedules for when the SEC expands to 16 teams. Last year at the SEC Spring meetings, it was revealed that there were only two options that would be under further consideration — an eight-game SEC schedule and a nine-game SEC schedule.

The eight-game model would have one yearly opponent and seven rotating opponents. The nine-game model would have three permanent opponents with six rotating teams.

League sources have told Gators Online that Florida’s three permanent opponents in that nine-game model would likely be Georgia, Tennessee, and newcomer Oklahoma. The cross-divisional rivalry with LSU, which has produced instant classics and bad blood, will be off the yearly schedule. However, it would preserve two of Florida’s biggest rivalry games.

An eight-game schedule would keep the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party but render the annual game with Tennessee extinct.

Change is coming for the Gators

The seat in Billy Napier’s office hadn’t even shown signs of wear before he was asked about future scheduling. At the time, Napier passed. He had a lot on his plate and didn’t know the landscape of politics involved.

Speaking with Gators Online on Monday afternoon in Pensacola, Napier offered more than he had previously.

“I think we’re in a unique position because we’ve got a great Power 5 opponent in our rival (Florida State),” Napier said. “Essentially we’re playing nine or ten. I don’t really care (if it’s nine or ten). I like the idea of playing all the teams. We’re going to get to do that whether it’s three and six or seven and one. We’ll either have one permanent and seven rotations or three and six. Either way, the positive here is that we get to play more of the SEC teams and then in a four-five-year cycle we’ll play them all.” 

An eight-game schedule would maintain the border-war rivalry with Georgia but would limit Florida-Tennessee (for example) to just two games every four years.

There is no guarantee that the schedule will be voted or agreed on. There are teams like Kentucky who would prefer to stay at eight games. It makes sense for their program to maintain an extra non-conference game for monetary reasons. They also don’t have storied rivalries with multiple other SEC schools. However, hell hath no fury like an Alabama fan if the Iron Bowl or Third Saturday in October were not played every season.

The league could, and might, continue kicking the can down the road and not make a final decision later this month, but time is ticking.