Friday Forum: How often should Florida and Auburn play?

The above picture is of Florida Gators quarterback Jacoby Brissett throwing a pass against the Auburn Tigers in 2011. It’s the last game that Florida and Auburn played — and, if you don’t remember it well, know that it was also a game in which Brissett and Jeff Driskel each took ineffective turns under center, and which produced the loudest #FreeGilly cries regarding Mike Gillislee to that point.

It’s been a while, in other words, since Florida and Auburn, teams that once met annually, have locked horns on the gridiron at all. It’s been so long since Florida last scored a win in the series, too, that Tim Tebow didn’t get one despite two chances, and that the Associated Press recap of that 2002 victory — in which Rex Grossman threw an overtime touchdown pass to win it after Auburn erased a 16-point deficit in the fourth quarter — reads almost like a dispatch from another planet.

And that has some folks bummed — ESPN’s Bill Connelly, for one, being so much so that he argued anew for the SEC scrapping divisions and moving to a pod system that would bring every team to every other campus far more frequently.

I’m not sure I believe in that scrapping of divisions — they mean a lot to the SEC and to the programs within it, and I’d assume Missouri and Auburn would simply swap spots far earlier than the divisions would be junked — and I’m not sure that I want to see Auburn every year when Florida already plays Florida State, Georgia, and LSU annually (and will, presumably, again see Tennessee as a hurdle rather than an anthill.)

I like the rivalry with Auburn despite Auburn having the recent edge, and I think it’s good for Florida to play these games — but I’m also not stupid, and don’t want Florida to be disadvantaged any more than it already has been by being saddled with the toughest year-in, year-out SEC West foe not named Alabama in the SEC’s current crossover system.

Is there a way to get Auburn to Gainesville and Florida to the Plains more often than the current system permits? I’m sure there are multiple ways, actually.

Is there an overreaction happening here because Florida went eight years without seeing Auburn, something that won’t always happen even under the current weird SEC schedule rotation? Yeah, I think so.

But I’m also not convinced that anyone knows the proper frequency of Florida-Auburn games. So I put it to you, this Friday — with the caveat that you can’t cancel the series, how often would you like Florida and Auburn to play?