First meeting | October 12, 1912 Auburn 27, Florida 13 |
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Latest meeting | October 15, 2011 Auburn 17, Florida 6 |
Next meeting | 2019 in Gainesville, Florida |
Statistics | |
Meetings total | 83 |
All-time series | Auburn leads, 43–38–2 |
Largest victory | Auburn, 68–0 (1917) |
Longest win streak | Florida, 7 (1995–2000) |
Current win streak | Auburn, 3 (2006–present) |
The Auburn–Florida football rivalry is an American college football rivalry between the Auburn Tigers football team of Auburn University and Florida Gators football team of the University of Florida. Both universities are founding members of the Southeastern Conference (SEC), and both were members of the Southern Conference before 1933.
Auburn leads the series 43–38–2. The series has been marked by periods of alternating winning streaks by one team intermingled with stretches of home field dominance by both. Auburn, however, has always led the series. Thirty-three of the games in the series have been decided by a touchdown or less, including two ties.
While the early part of the series saw Auburn and Florida trade 6-game and 5-game winning streaks respectively, the rivalry has evolved into one of the mostly evenly matched and hardest fought in the Southeastern Conference. The games have often had SEC title and national championship implications. As described by Gainesville Sun sports columnist Pat Dooley following the 2007 game, "Florida-Auburn delivered another game that made one side ecstatic and one side heartbroken. That's what it does."
The first game in the series was played between coach Mike Donahue's Tigers and coach George E. Pyle's Gators in 1912, on the Auburn, Alabama campus of what was then called Alabama Polytechnic Institute. The Auburn Tigers won the first six games played by the two teams from 1912 to 1917, dominating the Florida Gators by two or more touchdowns in five of the six games. When the series resumed in 1927, the Florida Gators were experiencing revived success under coaches Harold Sebring and Charlie Bachman, and it was the Gators' turn for a streak, winning seven of the next eight. Beginning in 1935, the fortunes of the Gators and Tigers reversed again, with the Tigers compiling a 7–2–1 record in the next ten games played through 1947.