OXFORD ­— Ole Miss has made a change to its 2020 football schedule and also agreed to a home-and-home series with a Power 5 conference opponent, it was announced Thursday.

Connecticut, which will begin playing as a football independent in 2020, will visit Oxford on Oct. 24 next season. It will be the first-ever meeting between Ole Miss and UConn on the football field.

Ole Miss was originally scheduled to play Middle Tennessee on that date, but that game was moved to Sept. 7, 2024 in Oxford. Middle Tennessee also agreed to play UConn at an unspecified date in Storrs, Conn., most likely in 2020, the Hartford Courant reported.

As part of the deal to move the game, Ole Miss will still pay Middle Tennessee the $1.5 million it would have received for playing in 2020. UConn will not get any money for playing Ole Miss, nor will it pay anything to Middle Tennessee.

The unusual arrangement was spurred by UConn’s decision to leave the American Athletic Conference after the 2019-20 academic year and become a football independent. It needed to build a schedule suddenly devoid of built-in conference opponents and was scrambling to assemble it on a short timeline.

Ole Miss has also agreed to a home-and-home series with Purdue in 2033 and 2034. The teams will play the first year in Oxford, and then in 2034 in West Lafayette, Indiana.
Ole Miss and Purdue have only played once, in 1929. Ole Miss has not played any current Big Ten opponent since facing Maryland in 1952.