6-1-1, 6-0-2, 6-2-0. They’re not area codes found in your local phone book, they’re different number combinations to get to the magic number the Southeastern Conference has finally settled on as it pertains to league football games: eight.
The combination of games that the conference will use moving forward is 6-1-1. Six games against a team’s divisional opponent, one permanent game against a pre-determined cross-division opponent and one rotating game against an opposite division opponent that will rotate every year alternating home and away.
On Tuesday, the conference announced the rotating opponents for all teams through 2025. For Florida, the lineup is: 2014 at Alabama; 2015 vs. Ole Miss; 2016 at Arkansas; 2017 vs. Texas A&M; 2018 at Mississippi State; 2019 vs. Auburn; 2020 at Ole Miss; 2021 vs. Alabama; 2022 at Texas A&M; 2023 vs. Arkansas; 2024 at Auburn; 2025 vs. Mississippi State.
But there’s a team lost in that shuffle: Auburn. Florida will play Auburn just twice in the next 10 years, and the Gators will have to wait until 2024 to play at the famed Jordan-Hare Stadium.
The matchup that is steeped in history for older Gators fans — the two squads played annually between the end of World War II and 2002 — is one that a former Florida coach isn’t exactly pleased about.
“I was sitting with coach (Steve) Spurrier, and he looked at me and said, ‘You know Florida and Auburn won’t play for every six years?’ He said ‘that’s not good for the SEC,’” coach Will Muschamp said to the media before a speaking engagement Tuesday.
The 6-1-1 appeases the ancient cross-division rivalries in the conference, mainly: Tennessee vs. Alabama and Georgia vs. Auburn. One team that isn’t happy about it is LSU, which Florida will keep as its permanent opponent.
LSU is vocally opposed to being attached at the hip with UF.
Muschamp said that’s just part of the deal and not everybody can be happy.
“There’s some give and take in everybody,” he said. “Nothing’s perfect, I can tell you that. Nothing’s going to satisfy everybody in the room as far as each school and institutions.
“As far as what’s fair and what’s not fair, at the end of the day, it was going to be 6-1-1. So you can stand around on the table and run around if you want to, at the end of the day it was going to be 6-1-1.”
Follow Richard Johnson on Twitter @RagjUF
Will Muschamp speaks to reporters prior to Tuesday's Gator Gathering at Emerson Hall.
