Florida Gators and LSU Tigers announce plans to make up their postponed game

Published Nov. 15, 2016 3:26 p.m. ET

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Aaron Torres

The long, national nightmare is over: Florida and LSU will play their game after all.

After last weekend’s game was cancelled due to Hurricane Matthew and no make-up date was announced, the two schools have finally come to an agreement on how, when and where the game will be played. They will meet on Saturday, Nov. 19 in Baton Rouge. To make the game happen, the two schools will buy out previously scheduled non-conference opponents that week; Presbyterian for Florida, and South Alabama for the Tigers.

The SEC released a statement on the decision, which read in part:

“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 part of the agreement, the game will be moved to Baton Rouge (presumably so the Tigers’ didn’t have to give up a home game), and next year’s game will be switched to Gainesville. The schedule will return to normal the following season, with the two teams meeting in Gainesville in 2018 and Baton Rouge in 2019.

So we now have an ending to the pseudo-controversy that arose last week when the game was cancelled. At the time, there were rumors that Florida was actively trying to avoid the game, after LSU made several concessions to try and get it in.

The controversy only picked up steam when Saturday came around and weather conditions were perfect in Gainesville. Meanwhile, other games were played in awful weather conditions, while others (like Georgia-South Carolina) were shifted to Sunday to avoid the hurricane.

Now the two teams will play a game that could have a major impact on both the SEC East and West title chases.

Also, in an interesting twist, the two teams that were bought out -- South Alabama and Presbyterian -- are working to schedule a game with each other.

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