Florida Gators Baseball: Impacts of proposed 2025 SEC schedule
![Florida's head coach Kevin O' Sullivan meets with umpires and Charleston Southern's head coach Marc MacMillan before the start of the 2023 season opener, Friday, February 17, 2023, at Condron Family Baseball Park in Gainesville, Florida. The Gators beat the Buccaneers 13-3. [Cyndi Chambers/ Gainesville Sun] 2023Gator Baseball February 17 2023 Condron Family Ballpark Season Opener](https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/c_fill,w_1080,ar_16:9,f_auto,q_auto,g_auto/shape%2Fcover%2Fsport%2F2413e6eaab0a42d9dffcd4e741c4284f35abd12376eb85d51e2c7e58be83304f.jpg "Florida's head coach Kevin O' Sullivan meets with umpires and Charleston Southern's head coach Marc MacMillan before the start of the 2023 season opener, Friday, February 17, 2023, at Condron Family Baseball Park in Gainesville, Florida. The Gators beat the Buccaneers 13-3. [Cyndi Chambers/ Gainesville Sun] 2023Gator Baseball February 17 2023 Condron Family Ballpark Season Opener")
Whether they want to or not, change is coming for Florida Gators baseball in 2025 with the arrival of Oklahoma and Texas. While it will bring two quality programs into an already stacked SEC, it also requires a shifting of the conference schedule to accommodate 16 teams.
In order to maintain progress, it means some annual series for the Gators are going to have to take a back seat.
Florida Gators Baseball: Change is in the air
The SEC released its tentative plan for baseball scheduling once Oklahoma and Texas arrive. Similar to its plan in football, the SEC would assign each team two permanent opponents and then rotate opponents for the other eight conference series to ensure a total of 30 SEC games a season.
As a reference point, conference scheduling right now has teams play all six opponents in their division (same East and West divisions as football) and rotate four opponents from the opposite division. The new proposal would scrap divisions for one big 16-team table.
NEWS | In preparation for the addition of Oklahoma and Texas beginning in 2024-25, future regular season schedule and post-season championship formats for seven @SEC sports have been approved: https://t.co/0BWLYKU3IC pic.twitter.com/8PidVTjTPZ
— Southeastern Conference (@SEC) March 14, 2023
If Florida Gators baseball is to follow the pathway of what is rumored for the football team, Florida would have Georgia and South Carolina as the permanent opponents and rotate the rest.
This means no more guaranteed yearly series against Tennessee or Vanderbilt (yes it also means Missouri and Kentucky get axed, but they don’t really care about baseball).
Georgia and South Carolina do make sense given they are the two closest schools to Gainesville. South Carolina won the national title in 2010 and 2011 and was a finalist in 2012. Since then, however, they have not made it back to Omaha for the College World Series
Georgia was a finalist in 2008, but had a stint from 2012 to 2017 where they didn’t even make the tournament. They at least made the NCAA tournament in 2022.
So while the possibility of playing Texas and Oklahoma is exciting, there does feel like something will be missing without an annual series against ole Rocky Top and the one sport Vanderbilt is actually good at.
Such is the price for progress.
Next. Florida might have a bullpen. dark