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Florida to play South Alabama in 2020

The Gators will face the team that scored its biggest upset over their athletic director’s former school.

By Andy Hutchins
South Carolina v Florida Photo by Rob Foldy/Getty Images

The Florida Gators will host South Alabama on September 19, 2020, the program announced in a release on Thursday.

The non-conference game will be “a one-time arrangement” bringing the Jaguars to Gainesville. It will be the first meeting between Florida and South Alabama, which hails from the Sun Belt Conference.

South Alabama opened its 2016 season at Mississippi State, and sprung an upset on the heavily-favored Bulldogs, winning 21-20. The Jaguars would finish 6-7 in 2016, never winning a second road game, and their victory over the Bulldogs — with Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin still serving as Mississippi State’s athletic director at the time — is their lone win over a team from a Power Five conference since joining the Football Bowl Subdivision in 2012.

The Jaguars have scheduled aggressively as an FBS team — they begin their 2017 season with Ole Miss, and played Nebraska and N.C State in 2015 — and a trip to Florida will merely be an extension of that.

Florida is 11-1 all-time against teams currently in the Sun Belt.