DAYTONA BEACH — It might have the easiest road game Stetson’s football team will ever set up.
On Sept. 12, the Hatters traveled to Daytona Stadium and squared off with Bethune-Cookman for the first time. The logistics didn’t require much effort.
“Doesn’t cost you anything except a little bit of gas money,” Wildcats athletic director Reggie Theus said with a laugh.
The same will be true when B-CU returns the favor and visits Spec Martin Stadium in 2028.
The two schools are Volusia County neighbors, with campuses sitting just 21 miles apart. Their fields are even closer, separated by about 18 miles.
And because neither has an on-campus stadium, they have to pack up and motor a few minutes down the road for their home games anyway. When they face each other, it just means several extra miles on the odometer.
“Any time you can put a game like this on the schedule where you can just hop in the bus, run over, play and come right back, it’s great for our students,” Stetson athletic director Ricky Ray said. “They’re not missing a ton of class. They’re not having to deal with flights. They’re not having to deal with all that kind of stuff ...
“Especially as a season goes on in each sport, if you can squeeze a few of those in there, it’s really helpful.”
Discussions surrounding this matchup started soon after the Hatters hired Ray in the spring of 2024. From the beginning, he stated a desire to form more regional rivalries and schedule bigger-name football opponents.
Stetson has since played Harvard, Furman, South Dakota State, UC Davis and Bethune-Cookman.
“The conversation was, ‘This is great for everybody,’” Ray said. “This is great for the fan bases. It’s great for the county. We haven’t done it, so there will be some excitement about it being brand new. Everybody was on board and got it done based on some of what we had available with our different openings different years.”
Theus called it “a natural.”
What does that mean for the series’ future?
The Wildcats and Hatters already battle across a number of sports.
They clash annually in baseball and meet frequently in softball.
In early September, a week before their football encounter, their volleyball programs went head-to-head on back-to-back nights, with Game 1 on B-CU’s campus and Game 2 in Stetson’s gym.
Later this month, the Wildcats will participate in Stetson’s women’s tennis invitational.
But one sport in which they haven’t competed against each other in the regular season in a while is basketball.
They still interact. The men’s teams held closed scrimmages the past two years. Bethune-Cookman often competes in Stetson’s yearly Holiday Hoops women’s basketball event, too, though it has not tangled directly with the Hatters.
The last time the schools played in men’s and women’s basketball was December 2019. That may not change.
“I don’t know about regular season because most of our non-conference games are guarantee games and things of that nature,” said Theus, who also serves as the Wildcats’ men’s basketball head coach. “But you never know. It’s all about fundraising for us.”
Of Bethune-Cookman’s 14 non-conference men’s basketball games in 2026, 13 will occur on the road, and multiple will come against power-conference squads like Florida State, Texas Tech and Virginia.
Stetson’s slate isn’t much different.
The Hatters will head to places like Clemson, Louisville, Miami and West Virginia.
Those buy games against premier opponents help to finance Bethune-Cookman and Stetson’s athletic departments, making them essential and leaving only slight wiggle room for a tilt against each other.
But as Theus said, you never know.
“It’s definitely a conversation that continues to happen across all of our sports,” Ray said. “It just makes so much sense to continue to do that.”
There will be at least one gridiron rematch, with both ADs mentioning the possibility for more in the future.
During their first showdown, the Hatters grabbed a 3-0 lead before the Wildcats scored the next 14 points and never trailed again. B-CU pulled away in the second half for a 43-18 victory. But Stetson stayed competitive. It was down only 14-10 at halftime.
The programs will meet again on Sept. 9, 2028.
This time, it might be the easiest road game Bethune-Cookman will ever set up.
“I think we both agreed that any time you can play a game on the road and still sleep in your own bed,” Ray said, “that’s a win for everybody.”
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Where Bethune-Cookman vs. Stetson series stands in football and beyond