Florida releases 2020 football schedule, headlined by Ole Miss trip

The Florida Gators released their 2020 schedule on Wednesday — and it’s one with a rare road trip and little else to get most fans excited.

The Gators will make their first trip to Oxford, Mississippi to play at Ole Miss since 2007 on October 17, 2020, to begin four weeks away from The Swamp in the middle of the season, but are otherwise playing their typical even-year slate of SEC foes and making a season-ending road trip to Florida State.

And Florida’s three other non-conference foes — Eastern Washington (Jim McElwain’s alma mater), South Alabama, and New Mexico State (which visited The Swamp in 2015) — comprise one of the least inspiring groups of non-conference opponents in recent history. That’s something that will be groused about especially loudly during a season between 2019’s season-opening showdown with rival Miami and the 2021 slate that features a date at USF — an ultra-rare road trip to a non-conference foe not named Florida State.

Florida will host SEC foes Kentucky, LSU, Missouri, and South Carolina in 2020, visit Ole Miss, Tennessee, and Vanderbilt, and play its traditional neutral-site game against Georgia in Jacksonville. The toughest stretch of the Gators’ season is likely to be that of its final three games in October, in which Florida will host LSU, then travel to Ole Miss and play against Georgia with a bye between the latter two games.

That bye also ensures that Florida will go more than a full month between home games, with the Gators not playing in The Swamp between their October 10 meeting with LSU and a November 14 return to Gainesville against Missouri.

All of Florida’s foes for 2020 were previously known, but Wednesday’s announcement comes as part of the SEC’s release of the full conference’s 2020 schedule, and confirms dates for each of the 56 intra-conference clashes during the regular season.

Here’s Florida’s full 2020 football schedule in table form.