gatormarc

I imagine a klansman got vetoed? I think it’s because of the “Land Shark Defense” thing they try to pull off. Ole Miss has been struggling with how to replace/revive their mascots for 20 years now. They used to lean into it before, flying confederate battle flags and everything at the game. I think a big part of the problem is that a large enough people were happy to just vote Colonel Reb back in. The students voted to rename him to Mr. Ole Miss at some point I guess to soften his history. Eventually a committee picked the Black Bear -- based on the bear that Roosevelt refused to shoot while hunting in Mississippi -- but wasn't very popular and it was replaced by the Land Shark a few years later. At least it's not a tiger.

Maybe. Florida's 2024 schedule will feature: UCF Miami LSU A&M Ole Miss Kentucky vs Georgia @ FSU @ Texas @ Tennessee @ Miss St.

Um, I was told that that drunk Cajun was a liar.

If Florida plays @ UTx in 2024, we may have to make that our road game. Though I imagine tickets will be hot.

No idea. When the 3-6-6 model first started being talked about a year ago, we were told Florida-Tennessee would be gone because: Bama is Tennessee's biggest rivalry Tennessee is Vandy's biggest rivalry Tennessee is Kentucky's biggest rivalry Florida/Tennessee isn't an old rivalry Tennessee is a "bottom 8" program and can only play 1 "top 8" program We only know a year later that the last bullet isn't necessarily the methodology used to create permanent matchups. Florida has a lot of rivalries. I think the most important thing is that we keep Georgia and there's no risk to our #2 rival in FSU OOC. The rest is negotiable since we'll be playing everyone 2/4 years anyway, we're still "getting back" lost rivalries like Auburn even if they aren't yearly.

This is not the 7-1 model.

TL; DR: I don’t have a travel guide really. We try to make an away game each year. My strategy has always been to logistically figure out the tickets, flight and hotel, and then build from there by searching for breweries and BBQ joints. A lot of smaller towns necessitate flying in to a nearby city and then driving. We're lucky that in Orlando there's also Sanford airport and Allegiant does direct flights to mid-sized markets. Some trips, we really just popped into town for the game while doing other things in the area, so it’s not really applicable to what everyone else will prefer. And also lots probably have changed since then. So, I figured I’d just give my personal experiences. Still have not been to games @Alabama, Auburn, or Ole Miss Long Version: 2008 - Arkansas (W) We made the mistake of driving to this one. Learned our lesson. Spent most of the time on the road. We fly most of the time now even for closish games. Florida’s campus is on the edge of the conference so unless we have some other reason to road trip, we do it. We play Arkansas just enough that there is a little bit of back and forth but not enough that there’s any real hate. At the time they were really proud of their replay board and loved to replay anything that they saw as a bad call that went Florida’s way. If they got a break, they decided to play commercials. 2009 - N/A 2010 - Tennessee (W) Spent most of our trip in Chattanooga (fun town, see Rock City) and only drove up to Knoxville for the game, so I’m not sure I’m a great judge. The seats sucked though. We were in a corner so your knees were rubbing on the person next to you. There was also a legitimate feeling that you could roll down the stairs and just go over into the lower bowl. Bring earplugs, they only have one song and they play it 100 times during the game. 2011 - Kentucky (W) This was the Joker Phillips era so they had no real illusions that they would win the game even though Florida has just had a rough year and were breaking in a new coach. They had a weird tailgate setup at the time where there were painted areas on the grass campus and you could park your car in one the night before to lock it in. Campus is weird in that there were legitimately two different architecture styles, and one of them is really ugly. They will talk basketball trash at a football game. We didn’t do any distillery tours and should have. 2012 - A&M (W) You probably don’t need much info about this one. We actually flew into Austin, hung out there for a day (learned to say Pooor Aggies by some UTx Alum), drove into College Station for the game and then went to San Antonio that night and did a day there. Fans were giddy to be in the SEC. I have a “Howdy” button somewhere. Some frat bros gave us cheap beer the moment we stepped on campus at like 9am. 2013 - Mizzou (L) Another I probably don’t have to tell you much about. Flew into St. Louis and only went into Columbia for the game. Stadium sucked but they were in the process of updating it for the SEC. It was also cold as fuck. 11am kickoff so we were at an official tailgate drinking bourbon to warm up. Mizzou won so their fans were very friendly. Had lots of drinks paid for us downtown. Hangover was horrendous. 2014 - Vanderbilt (W) Nashville is a fun town. Campus is nice. Visited the Capitol Building. The stadium isn’t anything special at all, old and small. Felt similar to Mizzou. It’s super common for visiting teams to bring 10k+ because it’s a fun trip and tickets are easy to get. Vandy fans are usually apathetic. 2015 - South Carolina (W) Drove for this one but it was part of another trip to visit a friend in Beaufort, so we just went in for the day. Since the stadium is at the fairgrounds and off campus, tailgating is a bit weird. There are fenced off areas that you can pay to park and tailgate. The shitty thing is they won’t let people walk through those areas so you may have to take a really weird route to get to the stadium. 2016 - vs Georgia in Jax (W) This is a trip you naturally will probably never make unless it’s for a bowl. Despite the fact that Jacksonville has hosted this game for a million years, it still feels like they are unprepared for it every year. The stadium experience is nice but traffic is awful before and after the game. Jax is super spread out so you might be staying at a hotel an hour of traffic from the game. 2017 - vs Michigan (Non-Con) in Dallas (L) I probably don’t need to tell you what you can do in Dallas. We had a lot of beer and BBQ. 2018 - Miss St. (W) Starkville is tiny, tiny, tiny. We stayed about 30 minutes out of town. We flew into Birmingham and did a day there before heading to Starkville. Campus is pretty small. They have one really nice quad area with nice buildings to walk around. The stadium is basically a horseshoe and one end zone has facilities so if you go in the wrong side, you have to circle the entire stadium to get to the other side. Fans were friendly. They had basically talked themselves into that Mullen had hit his ceiling there (he had) but the new coach was going to take it to the next level (he didn’t) and Florida was too tough a job for Mullen (well, yes and no). 2019 - LSU (L) Drove and stopped in Pensacola and New Orleans on the way. Baton Rouge is only about 90 minutes drive from New Orleans so it’s an easy drive in for the day. LSU fans were drunk when we showed up on campus. Tons of in your face trash talk but never saw anything escalate to violence. They were an unreal team and we almost pulled it off. It made the trash talk worse because I think they knew that their perfect season almost crashed and burned. Had a drunk 60 year old trash talk me as we left the stadium from his RV. I’m not sure he ever made it to the game but he wanted to give me crap because we left with 1:30 on the clock.. 2020 - N/A This was supposed to be our trip to The Grove. 2021 - South Carolina (L) This time we drove to Charleston and saw the sights there before heading to Columbia for the game. Visited the Capitol Building. Had some friendly tailgates with Cock fans. They didn’t have any expectations on winning with the new coach, even though this was well into Mullen’s “I don’t give a fuck” moment. 2022 - FSU (Non-Con) (L) This may or may not be relevant in the future. Getting a hotel in Tallahassee sucks because there really isn’t a big city anywhere near by. We ended up staying in a motel an hour away. It was also Black Friday so the experience was probably different than your average gameday. So many drunk students, both Florida and FSU. Tons of mixed parties because the frats for both schools just get together. Getting out of town sucked. It seemed like they would just direct traffic to an area and just abandon you to figure out the rest of the way to the Interstate.

Of course, neither their football stadium nor basketball arena are on campus.

New Jersey sounds pretty dangerous.

That schedule was locked in May 2014. I don't think it was done to protect either team, just one of the downsides to a 12 year rotation schedule. There are a lot of examples of games that haven't played in a specific stadium in the last decade because of it. Florida hasn't hosted Miss St since 2010. Bama wouldn't have played at Mizzou yet if not for the game being added in 2020 for the COVID schedule. At that point in 2020, UGA had just hosted A&M in 2019 so there wasn't really a drive to add that matchup as one of the extra 2 games. Original rotation for reference:

No, they did not. The number of permanent rivals has not been decided going forward yet. That's why we'll have a bridge schedule in 2024.

In 2001, they changed locations, sponsors/names, and management groups. So is the lineage determined by one bowl selling off their tie-in contract?

How do you determine the lineage when both location and sponsor have changed?

Cheez-It Bowl still lives. They're sponsoring the NYD bowl in the same stadium. https://cheezitcitrusbowl.com/

Are people printing these tweets off low in blue toner and then rescanning or something?

I'll take that.

Are trucks even allowed at Bucees? I'm pretty sure the two in Florida have no semi signs at the turn ins.

It sounds like the "top 8" isn't really a hard set thing though. It sounds like the SEC will start with rivalries, and then fill in the rest based on balancing out the difficulty.

Stadium built on an ancient burial mound?

The OU-UF pairing has been a consistent prediction/guess from Ross Dellenger going back to spring of 2022. https://www.si.com/college/2022/05/24/sec-football-schedule-future It wasn't based on any inside knowledge, but on him trying to create a balanced mix of rivals, geography, and parity, also using the top 8/bottom 8 theory that everyone was using last year before Saban mentioned their competitive matrix that the SEC was using when he started his complaints about possibly getting Auburn, Tennessee, and LSU. Not saying it won't happen, but it seems to fly in the face of what the SEC has talked about with regards to protecting actual rivalries. UF has no shortage of them and it would be sub-optimal if we ended up with Oklahoma vs say one of Tennessee, LSU, or Auburn, though since UF has been a big proponent of making 9 happen, it could be our AD is being overly flexible for the league.

Found an article from February. It sounds like they were set to get a full share year 1 but that changed when OU and UT negotiated an earlier move to the SEC. https://www.si.com/fannation/college/cfb-hq/ncaa-football/college-football-realignment-texas-oklahoma-sec-2024

I'm also trying to figure out why OU and UT will be getting full shares for 2024-25 from the Big 12.

In a couple of years, the Big12 could realistically control 75% of all Sea Worlds. Someone let the sales department know.

Theoretically I agree with you. But this is happening when ESPN is laying off people and I think I read they are in the middle of negotiating some other sports right now as well. Maybe they'll be more receptive in a year.