Why did we play UK and UF every year until 2002?

The SEC went to the current rotation because it allowed a 4 year player to at least play every team in the SEC, during his career.

Hence, a team rotates onto our schedule every 4 years.

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The SEC went to the current rotation because it allowed a 4 year player to at least play every team in the SEC, during his career.

Hence, a team rotates onto our schedule every 4 years.

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The original "2 permanents" schedule tried to maintain rivalries (like Florida-Auburn).

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Balance

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Auburn had UF and UGA. Moo State had UK and USCe. Not exactly fair at that time.

I'd gladly have kept UK over UF lol.

The history of the Kentucky series is kinda strange. If you look at an LSU media guide we played several teams that became members of the original 13 SEC teams as far back as the late 1890's. But even with the start of the SEC in 1933 we never played Kentucky until 1949.Then with the exception of 1951 we played them every year until 2002.

Conference scheduling was rather screwy until the mid 70's when up until then some teams might play 8 games,some might play 5. With Tulane and Georgia Tech's departure it made it even weirder for a brief period in the mid to late 60s when some 'out of conference games' were designated as 'appointed conference games'. LSU only playe 4 actual SEC games in 1968 but games with TCU and Tulane counted in the SEC standings.

In 1972 there was the first round of shoring up conference meetings with all the teams. In addition to the games seemingly played every year, there was a home and home rotation with every team for the next 8 seasons which contiuned again starting over in 1980 when each team would play 6 SEC games. (Ole Miss and Alabama had a 'home and home' in 1980 and 1981 but those games didn't count as SEC games).

1988 was the first time with 5 permanent games and two other rotating SEC games. This last through 1991 when divisional play started in 1992 with South Carolina and Arkansas. The 5-2-1 was in play through 2001 as Kentucky and Florida were LSU's permanent East opponents. In 2002 it changed,but it was a coincidence we played Kentucky again,also in Lexington to make the schedules balance where each team could play 4 home and 4 road games.