Florida-LSU game moved to Baton Rouge, rescheduled for Nov. 19

The Florida-LSU game, postponed by Hurricane Matthew, has been moved to Baton Rouge on Nov. 19.

LSU athletic director Joe Alleva said earlier this week that LSU would not give up a home game to re-schedule its rained out game at Florida.

Now it won’t have to — in 2016, at least.

The SEC announced Thursday that the game between the Tigers and Gators, originally scheduled for Oct. 8 in Gainesville but postponed because of Hurricane Matthew, will be played on Nov. 19 in Baton Rouge. Both Florida and LSU had non-conference home games scheduled for that day (LSU vs. South Alabama, Florida vs. Presbyterian), but both programs exercised the “cancellation clauses” (read: buyouts) for the games.

With Florida agreeing to give up a home game to play at LSU, LSU, in turn, will play at Florida in 2017 and 2018. The 2017 game was originally scheduled to be played in Baton Rouge.

This year’s game will be played “no later than 3:30 pm ET,” Florida said.

“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.”

As representatives from both LSU and Florida bickered about reaching a solution, Sankey maintained throughout the process that the game needed to be played.

Alleva was very clear earlier this week that LSU would not give up a home game on Nov. 19. In a statement Thursday, Florida AD Jeremy Foley said LSU wasn’t a flexible negotiating partner.

“We made this decision to play the game in Baton Rouge,” Foley said. “The conference office asked us to find a solution in working with LSU, yet LSU was never a true partner in our discussions. The Southeastern Conference offered some other solutions and the LSU administration made it clear that they were unwilling to consider other reasonable options.”

Alleva said in a statement that LSU is “happy with the decision.”

“As previously reported, it was our wish to have played the game last weekend but all options that we put on the table were declined. After extensive discussion, the University of Florida agreed to play the 2016 contest in Baton Rouge and LSU agreed to play the 2017 game in Gainesville,” Alleva said in a statement.”

“I want to thank the Southeastern Conference, in particular Commissioner Greg Sankey, for his efforts to make sure that we found a place on the schedule to play the game. This is a game that our players and fans look forward to each year and we are appreciative of the lengths that our league office went to in order to make this game happen.

“Historically, we have always enjoyed a great relationship with Florida. We have great respect for their institution and their football program. I hope that we can all learn from this experience and as a league, be in a better position to deal with these situations in the future.”

Nevertheless, the game will be played. If it hadn’t been rescheduled, the SEC said, neither team would have been eligible to play in the SEC Championship Game.

“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,” the league said. “Had the game not been rescheduled, Florida and LSU would have been ineligible to compete for the SEC title this season.”

In the future, the SEC said it will re-evaluate its process for rescheduling postponed games.

“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,” the league said.