LSU vs Florida Officially Rescheduled; What That Means For The Tigers
By Jacob Young
After both schools and fanbases spent the better part of two weeks criticizing and calling out the other and the conference, the two sides have officially agreed to reschedule the game. Florida will travel to Baton Rouge to play the Tigers on November 19th. Here is the full release from the conference:
"The LSU vs. Florida football game, postponed last Saturday due to Hurricane Matthew, has been rescheduled for Saturday, November 19, at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge under the terms of an agreement announced by SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey.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.“It was important for us to come to a resolution. 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,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said. “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.”LSU has also agreed to play the 2017 in Gainesville, which was originally scheduled to be played in Baton Rouge. LSU will return to Gainesville in 2018 as the normal schedule rotation resumes.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.LSU was originally scheduled to play South Alabama on November 19 in Baton Rouge and Florida was slated to host Presbyterian on the same day in Gainesville. LSU and Florida will exercise cancellation clauses for those respective games.“Lastly, I send thanks to Sun Belt Conference Commissioner Karl Benson and his membership which worked in collaboration and a great spirit of cooperation in presenting options as we worked through this process,” Sankey said. “I also thank Presbyterian for their understanding of this situation.”"
This is absolutely huge news for the LSU Tigers. Under interim coach Ed Orgeron, the team is looking to play strong down the stretch and potentially make a run back into the conference championship picture. As the release states, both schools would have been ineligible for the SEC Championship game had the contest not been made up, so the news at least gives the Tigers a chance.
Playing this game is also huge for any chance LSU has at getting back into the thick of things in the College Football Playoff rankings. LSU is still a long shot, but with games against highly ranked opponents such as Alabama, Texas A&M, Ole Miss, and Arkansas, you certainly can’t rule out the Tigers getting in if they were to win out.
The game against the Gators adds another ranked opponent to LSU’s remaining schedule, giving them even more opportunity to earn points with the committee and move up through the rankings.
LSU will get to play this one at home, and props to Joe Alleva for that one. From the very start, he made it clear that he was not giving up any home games, and that forced Florida to give in and play it in Baton Rouge this year.
Heading into last week, the Tigers were set to play the Gators on the road, and many still expected them to pick up a win against Florida. Now, with the game being played on LSU’s home field, this one could be a fairly easy win for Ed Orgeron’s team.
This entire situation has been plagued with drama and poor decision making, but we finally have a resolution. The LSU Tigers get a home game, Florida is left seething, and the conference made some necessary changes to its policies. Sounds like a win to me.