COLUMBIA — South Carolina’s 2024 football schedule is nearly complete.
The Gamecocks’ SEC schedule in 2024 includes home games against LSU, Ole Miss, Missouri and Texas A&M; and games at Oklahoma, Alabama, Kentucky and Vanderbilt, the SEC announced on Wednesday. Specific dates will be announced later, but those eight league opponents will join the four already-known games on the Gamecocks’ 2024 slate.
The previously known games are opening at home against Old Dominion on Aug. 31, hosting Akron on Sept. 21, hosting Wofford on Nov. 23 and finishing the regular season at Clemson on Nov. 30.
It’s a stunning development to look at a Gamecocks schedule and not see Tennessee, Florida or Georgia, each divisional opponents since 1992. Georgia in particular will not be on USC’s schedule for the first time since 1991.
The Gamecocks have played the Bulldogs more times (75) than any other opponent but Clemson in a series that started in 1894. USC is in Athens on Sept. 16 this year.
Not having Tennessee nor Florida — two-thirds of the “Orange Crush” that has traditionally been at the end of the year alongside Clemson — is a favor to the Gamecocks. USC is 7-24 against the Gators since joining the league and 10-21 against the Volunteers.
USC will take on the Sooners for the first time in school history. Coach Shane Beamer was hired from Oklahoma in 2020.
Every SEC team received Oklahoma or Texas on their 2024 schedule. The Gamecocks were already set to play at Alabama in 2024 under the old model.
The SEC announced the list of opponents for each league member as it moves into a new world, that of a conference including the Sooners and Longhorns and the first season since 1991 of having no SEC East or West divisions. Eight games and a new set of permanent opponents was the call for 2024 as the conference seems on track to eventually get to nine league opponents per year, but at least for one more season, USC and a handful of other schools got what they desired in keeping the schedule at eight.
USC did not wish to have to start canceling future games with non-conference opponents if the SEC adds another league game, and frankly needs its four non-conference opponents to increase the Gamecocks’ chances of making it to a bowl game. With Clemson locked as one non-con opponents per year, USC tries to schedule one “name” school per year — North Carolina, Virginia Tech, N.C. State, Miami and Appalachian State dot schedules through 2035 — and then two smaller schools, one an in-state opponent and one from a non-Power 5 conference.
The Gamecocks received help from other schools in the same predicament at the SEC Spring Meetings, the league unable to obtain a two-thirds vote to adopt a nine-game schedule. Financial concerns — if the current TV deal would compensate schools for an extra game — and strength of schedule rankings as they pertain to an expanded College Football Playoff forced the standoff.
So the eight-game model with one permanent opponent was ushered in for 2024, the league watching out for “traditional” rivalries — Alabama-Auburn, Auburn-Georgia, Auburn-Florida, Tennessee-Alabama, Florida-Georgia, Ole Miss-Mississippi State, Tennessee-Vanderbilt, LSU-Ole Miss, Alabama-LSU — and trying to schedule via “competitive balance.”
The SEC will re-start the Texas-Texas A&M rivalry that was broken when the Aggies joined the SEC, and inherit the Oklahoma-Texas “Red River Showdown” from the Big 12. The Arkansas-Texas rivalry from the two schools’ Southwest Conference days will also return in 2024.
The league will drop the two divisions but still play the SEC Championship Game, with the top two finishers in the league squaring off in Atlanta in the first week of December.