Florida

The University of Florida was established in Gainesville in 1906 and fielded its first official varsity football team that fall. Since then, Florida Gator football squads have played in over 40 bowl games; won three national championships (1996, 2006 and 2008) and eight Southeastern Conference championships (1991, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2006 and 2008) and have produced three Heisman Trophy winners, over 90 first-team All-Americans and 50 National Football League (NFL) first-round draft choices.

Discounting interim coaches, there have been twenty-five head coaches in program history, including three who were inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame for their coaching success. Florida's first head coach was Pee Wee Forsythe, and the current coach is Billy Napier.

Conference affiliations

Florida competed for its first several seasons as an independent before joining the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association in 1912. They moved to the Southern Conference in 1922, then joined with a dozen other schools to establish the Southeastern Conference (SEC) in 1932, where it has remained ever since.

Yearly schedule

The SEC allowed considerable leeway with regard to conference schedules for several decades after its founded in 1932. Like most members, Florida played a few conference foes every season but would not play other schools for several years at a time until the conference attempted to balance schedules by establishing a rotation of sorts in the late 1960s.

Schedules were further standardized in 1992 when the SEC expanded to twelve teams, established two divisions, and set eight team conference schedule plus a championship game between the two division winners. Florida was placed in the SEC Eastern Division and played every division foe every season. From 2012 until 2023, the Gators' annual conference slate consisted of Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri and Vanderbilt along with permanant Western Division opponent LSU plus another Western Division team on a rotationing schedule.

In 2024, the SEC expanded to 16 schools and abolished divisions, though it kept the eight game conference slate and retained most annual rivalries for at least one season as member schools worked to establish a new scheduling system.

Historically, Florida's key conference rivals include Georgia (played in Jacksonville usually around Halloween), Tennessee (historically played in mid-September), and LSU, though other conference rivalries have resulted in memorable games over the years.

Florida has played in-state rival Florida State every year since 1958 except for the pandemic-altered 2020 season. The Gators and Seminoles have faced off around Thankgiving since the 1970s, and their emergence as perennial football powers during the 1990s helped build the Florida–Florida State rivalry into a game that often had national-title implications. In-state rival Miami was once another annual opponent. However, the rivalry was dropped when the SEC expanded its yearly schedule in the late 1980s, and the Florida–Miami rivalry has been renewed on an infrequent basis since then. The remaining dates on Florida's regular schedule are filled by non-conference opponents which vary from year to year.

Home fields

The University of Florida's campus did not include sports facilities when it opened in 1906, so UF's first several football and baseball squads played their home games at The Ballpark, a primitive municipal facility near downtown Gainesville. In 1911, the school purchased the bleachers from the city and moved them to University Athletic Field, a newly-cleared patch of land on the west side of campus along University Avenue. Larger bleachers were installed in 1915, when the facility was renamed Fleming Field.

The football program first gained national recognition in the late 1920s, prompting UF president John J. Tigert to initiate plans for a modern stadium. A shallow ravine just south of Fleming Field was the chosen site, and 20,000 seat Florida Field opened in 1930. The facility underwent major expansions in the mid-1960s, early 1980s, and early 1990s to increase stadium capacity to about 90,000, the largest in the state. Its name was extended to "Florida Field at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium" in 1989 to honor UF benefactor Ben Hill Griffin, and the field was rechristened "Steve Spurrier-Florida Field" in 2016 to honor Gator player and coach Steve Spurrier. Spurrier also coined the stadium's nickname of "The Swamp" in 1992, early in his tenure as head football coach.