SEC Nation to feature in-state rivalry game for Week 1 of 2024 season

SEC Nation will feature a rivalry atmosphere for Week 1 of the 2024 college football season.

The SEC Network announced Wednesday that its traveling pregame show will be in Gainesville on Aug. 31 when Florida hosts in-state rival Miami in The Swamp.

SEC Nation debuted on August 28, 2014. For the 2024 season, the pregame show will regularly follow the site of the 3:30 p.m. SEC on ABC showdown. Laura Rutledge will host the show for her eighth season, her ninth on the show overall, joined by Tim Tebow, Paul Finebaum, Jordan Rodgers and Roman Harper. Like Tebow, Rutledge is a UF alum.

WEEK 1 WE’RE HEADED TO GAINESVILLE ️ @GatorsFB pic.twitter.com/7GZrTsPw8a

— SEC Network (@SECNetwork) July 17, 2024

The Florida-Miami rivalry dates back to 1938. The Hurricanes own a 29-27 advantage over the Gators in the series.

UF and UM played regularly until 1987. The next meeting, however, did not come until a Sugar Bowl showdown on Jan. 2, 2001, a 37-20 Miami victory over Steve Spurrier’s squad.

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Including the Sugar Bowl clash and a Peach Bowl meeting in 2004, the Gators and Hurricanes have only faced each other seven times this century. Florida is 2-5 in those meetings.

The last time the Gators and Canes played in The Swamp was on Sept. 6, 2008. Urban Meyer’s UF squad defeated a Randy Shannon-coached UM team 26-3. Shannon would later be a Florida assistant under Jim McElwain and interim head coach in 2017. He is now an assistant coach at Florida State, completing the Big 3 trifecta.

Florida and Miami last faced off in 2019, a coaching matchup between Dan Mullen and his former assistant, Manny Diaz. The game, played at the neutral site of Camping World Stadium in Orlando, went down to the wire, with Mullen’s Gators escaping with a 24-20 victory.

There will be a coaching storyline again for the 2024 meeting. Florida head coach Billy Napier and Miami head coach Mario Cristobal know each other well from their time together as offensive assistants on Nick Saban’s Alabama staff (2013-16). They did not face each other as head coaches at Louisiana (Napier) and Oregon (Cristobal) from 2018-21.

Andrew Olson

Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.