Weather Suspended Florida-Idaho

The Florida Gators were looking to get past their ugly 2013 season tonight with a nice, easy game against the Idaho Vandals, but the local weather would not cooperate. After lengthy delays, the referees and ADs of the two schools agree to suspend the game.

The game was supposed to kick off at 7:00 pm Eastern, but lightning storms delayed the opening kick for almost three hours. During most of that delay, rain ranging from a drizzle to torrential downpours fell on the stadium. Pictures from the site showed the field at times looking entirely covered in water, and at one point, there was enough standing water that the wind caused visible waves.

The teams did manage to get one play in, the opening kickoff as pictured above. Appropriately enough, Valdez Showers was the guy who ended up with the ball, and he returned the short kick to the Idaho 14. At that point, officials suspended the game for lightning again. After over a half an hour of delay with more rain, the referees and officials from both schools agreed that the playing field was too waterlogged and unsafe to conduct the game.

Both Florida and Idaho have a bye week on October 25, so that is a potential makeup date. The schools will need to do some negotiating over travel costs, ticketing, and other logistics. No decision on whether the teams will reschedule or outright cancel the game is coming tonight.

Something similar happened in 2004 when Hurricane Frances postponed Florida's opener against Middle Tennessee until the middle of the season. Those adept at pattern recognition will remember what major event happened during the 2004 season. It's a disappointment for Florida that it loses a tune up game to get its new offense some work, but they'll try again next week against Eastern Michigan.