LSU, Florida to make up game Nov. 19, buy out previous opponents

— -- BATON ROUGE, La. --? LSU Tigers and Florida Gators will make up their game, after all.

But Gators athletic director Jeremy Foley was critical Thursday of LSU's role in the heated negotiations over where and when to play the game.

Hurricane Matthew forced last Saturday's game to be postponed, and on Thursday the schools reached an agreement with SEC commissioner Greg Sankey to move the game from Florida to LSU and to play Nov. 19 at Tiger Stadium.

"We made this decision to play the game in Baton Rouge," Foley said in a statement. "The conference office asked us to find a solution in working with LSU, yet LSU was never a true partner in our discussions. The Southeastern Conference offered some other solutions and the LSU administration made it clear that they were unwilling to consider other reasonable options."

LSU did agree to play at Florida next year instead of hosting as originally planned, and the Tigers will again play in Gainesville in 2018 to resume the normal schedule rotation.?The agreement also stipulates the game will kick off no later than 3:30 p.m. ET, the Florida statement said.

LSU and Florida will also buy out their scheduled home games originally scheduled for Nov. 19 -- Florida against Presbyterian and LSU against South Alabama.

"It was important for us to come to a resolution," SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said. "Each university had its own set of concerns throughout the process, however existing SEC regulations did not provide an avenue to resolve conflicting issues in a more timely manner. As I have repeatedly said, this game needed to be played. In the end, I want to give credit to the University of Florida for making concessions to move this year's game to Baton Rouge."

According to a release from the SEC, the conference's presidents and chancellors plan to alter existing policy to give the commissioner more leeway in settling future disputes like this should the involved schools fail to reach a mutual agreement.

Current bylaws state that only the teams that play all eight conference games are eligible to play in Atlanta for the SEC Championship.