GAINESVILLE, Fla. – It has been a long wait, but in the end, Florida coaches can round up a date in the calendar and agree on an opponent.
The Gators’ 2020 season will officially begin with a dive game at Ole Miss. The SEC announced the Matchups Week 1 matchups, which will be played on Sept. 26, on Monday at the Paul Finebaum Show.
The rest of the team’s schedule will be unveiled at 7 a.m. ET on the SEC Network in a special airing.
The season opener against Ole Miss will be the first time Florida has opened a season with an opponent of the conference since 1992, when Steve Spurrier led the Gators to a 35-19 victory over the Kentucky Wildcats. Starting the season with a conference fixture will certainly be more challenging than what UF had originally planned.
Before the move to a slate with only conference facilities, Florida seemed to have a very controlled disaster until conference play. The Gators were set to host Eastern Washington, Kentucky and South Alabama in the first three weeks for a road trip to Tennessee.
Now the Gators will have to be ready to play off the rip. And they’ll have to do it with less time to prepare than usual after the SEC changed this year’s bankruptcy schedule, reducing the number of precision practices from 29 to 25, cutting back on the days that coaches can practice from six to five. and limited exercise to 20 hours per week.
Those were changes that coach Dan Mullen was not enthusiastic about.
“I do not understand why it was changed from just not having a regular training camp. Somehow they wanted to change training camp and reduce the hours.
“We had built up something with the passes and then prepared 10 days ago to prepare for practice (on the original start date), then the SEC, I think, wanted to postpone it,” Mullen said Monday after the team’s first practice. “A little slower start than we would have expected or hoped for today.”
But like it or not, Florida will be ready to open the season against Ole Miss.
The Gators won the last game in the series, stunning no. 3 Ole Miss in a 38-10 blowout in the Swamp.
Now Mullen can start preparing his plan for the season opener. Later tonight he will be able to plan the entire season.
“We’ll play who they put in front of us,” Mullen said. “I mean, we know who we’re playing against, the order I think is coming out tonight, that we’ll find out. Would have known that last week. … It would have been great to use the time to prepare for the order in which you play. But we’ll find out when it comes tonight. We’ll be fine. “
