After facing six top-10 teams in 2025, the Florida Gators might get some relief this season. But even still, UF is likely to have one of the most challenging schedules in college football,
While Miami, last season’s national runner-up, is off the schedule, UF has a gauntlet that includes games against Georgia, Oklahoma, Ole Miss and Texas — all teams getting lots of offseason buzz. Meanwhile, the Gators also have road tests at Auburn, Missouri, Kentucky and FSU.
This week, The Sports News ranked the SEC’s schedules, from most difficult to easiest using the following metrics:
—Ranked opponents. This is the easiest metric. How many opponents in Sporting News’ Post-Spring Top 25 does each team face this season? Then we gave points for each opponent in AP Poll style (25 for No. 1, 1 for No. 25). So, Texas plays No. 2 Ohio State on Sept. 12. That’s 24 points toward the Longhorns’ strength of schedule.
—Home or road games? We added four points to a school’s total for each road game against a ranked opponent. We subtracted four points from that total for a home game against a ranked opponent. Neutral-site games are zero points.
—Totals from hardest to easiest. We totaled those two columns and ranked the 18 Big Ten teams. Teams with the highest point total have the toughest schedules. Teams with the lowest point total have the easiest schedules.
After the numbers were crunched, Missouri was ranked as having the toughest schedule and Alabama the easiest. Florida had the fourth hardest in the 16-team league, with the following ranked opponents: at No. 8 Ole Miss, at No. 4 Texas, vs. No. 3 Georgia, vs. No. 9 Oklahoma.
Here are the complete rankings, starting with the most difficult schedule first:
Missouri
Oklahoma
Arkansas
Florida
Ole Miss
Mississippi State
Texas
Auburn
Texas A&M
South Carolina
Kentucky
LSU
Tennesssee
Georgia
Vanderbilt
Alabama
While Florida has four games against teams in The Sporting News post-spring Top 25, Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee have just one each, with Georgia, LSU and Vanderbilt having two each.
Meanwhile, College Football News ranks Florida’s 2026 schedule as the fifth most difficult in the country. The top 10 hardest looks like this:
1. Arkansas
2. Oklahoma
3. Texas
4. Purdue
5. Florida
6. Oregon
7. Michigan
8. Alabama
9. Mississippi State
10. Kentucky
Other notables teams, along with their respective College Football News schedule ranking:
—Miami: No. 59
—Indiana: No. 50
—Florida State: No. 45
—Notre Dame: No. 42
—LSU: No. 18
—Georgia: No. 14
Elsewhere, CBS Sports ranked the top 12 most difficult schedules among the teams that made its post-spring Top 25 and Florida is not among them. Texas is No. 1 on that list, followed by Oklahoma. To give you an idea of how opinions differ, the CBS list includes LSU (7), Georgia (9) and Alabama (10) ahead of UF — three programs that as we noted were well below the Gators in The Sporting News schedule rankings. And Indiana came in at No. 12.
Multiples site have ranked the toughest schedules using only opponent records from the previous seasons. But given how much turnover there is in college football these days thanks largely to the transfer portal, we didn’t include those.
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