South Carolina football: Can Gamecocks be next first-time national champion?

Can South Carolina football become next first-time champion?

There hasn’t been a first-time national champion in college football since Steve Spurrier and the Florida Gators won the program’s first title back in the 1996 season. Since then, it’s been the familiar faces taking home the hardware. The Gamecocks have yet to notch the sport’s top feat. They’ve come close a couple of times, finding themselves ranked among the nation’s top five teams in 1984, 2012, and 2013, but ultimately falling short of a championship.

While the program hasn’t sniffed a CFB Playoff appearance since the inception of the new format, their chances of crashing the party could improve should the sport move to a 12-team event, which has been proposed by the NCAA. That new configuration would allow for at-large bids, on top of the typical conference champions, allowing for more opportunities from schools outside of the country’s blue bloods.

And while the Gamecocks are currently in the process of a rebuild, it’s not unfathomable to see the program making a run to a playoff spot should the bracket increase the amount of teams in the field. In fact, South Carolina would’ve been included in a 12-team playoff in both 2011 and 2013, each of which were 11-win seasons.

But is it realistic to think the Gamecocks can not only get into the playoff field, but ultimately take home their first ever national championship?  One writer believes so.

Matt Fortuna of The Athletic was asked about college football’s next first-time national champion, and he chose South Carolina as his best bet.

"“Give me South Carolina. If Clemson can do what it has done under Dabo, then the Gamecocks can do it, too, with the perfect coach. Plus, it’s hard to imagine any non-SEC team suddenly becoming a super-power anytime soon.”"

Fortuna’s explanation is two-fold. First, he notes the recent success that South Carolina’s archrival, Clemson, has seen. While the Tigers had a title back in 1981, they fell from national relevance between the mid 1980s through 2015. The program found its perfect fit at head coach, and has been able to now elevate itself to the pinnacle of college football.

Secondly, he mentions the SEC affiliation. Fortuna states that it’s hard to see a team outside of football’s best league becoming a major power in the current era. While programs like Baylor, Oregon, Wisconsin, and West Virginia were also mentioned as threats to take home their first title, teams in the SEC are typically able to out-recruit schools from the Big Ten, Big XII, PAC-12, and Group of Five, which builds a foundation for the future of the program and helps put a better product on the field on a more consistent basis. There’s not a viable first-time program from the ACC currently, particularly with Clemson’s stranglehold on the league in recent years.

South Carolina has the resources on campus, an extensive budget, and fertile recruiting grounds to compete with the national powers. It’s just a matter of putting it all together on the field. The Gamecocks have never been able to string together long-term national relevance, but they’ve seen spikes into college football’s elite every so often. Maybe that next spike will result in the program’s first playoff appearance, and end in a national championship.