South Carolina Football’s Highest Ranked Signee Ever, Jadeveon Clowney (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)
2023’s National Signing Day is almost here, and college football’s recruiting news cycle is at one of its two busiest points of the year (the other being the Early Signing Period). South Carolina football seems primed to finish the 2023 cycle with a top-20 class, and one very large, very fast fish—Archbishop Carroll’s Nyckoles Harbor—might still be brought into the boat.
However, college football coaches everywhere have already turned their attentions to 2024, as many prospects have begun making their pledges public in recent months. For the South Carolina football program, the 2024 class is off to one of the best starts in the nation. Quarterback Dante Reno, a consensus top-250 recruit was the first of the 2024 targets to publicly commit to Head Coach Shane Beamer and the Gamecocks. For a time, he was the lone commit for next year’s cycle.
As 2022 gave birth to a new year, the outlook began to change for South Carolina football’s recruiting efforts. In a week’s time, three more blue chippers joined Reno as verbal commitments to the Gamecocks.
First came South Carolina native Kam Pringle, the nation’s number one ranked offensive tackle (according to ESPN.com’s recruiting rankings). A couple of days later, Michael Smith joined the class as a consensus top-10 tight end recruit (ranked as high as #60 nationally by 247Sports). Then, on the final Friday of January, elite linebacker Wendell Gregory hopped on board—another consensus four-star recruit and top-40 player nationally according to on3. At the moment of Gregory’s commitment, the Gamecocks had a consensus top-10 class for 2024.
Not to be forgotten, Peyton Argent, a five-star kicker ranked #17 by KohlsKicking.com, also committed to the Gamecocks with a preferred walk-on spot on the team.
247Sports’ Bud Elliott coined the term “blue chip ratio” to evaluate whether or not a college football team has the necessary talent to win a national championship. This theory says that a team’s roster of 85 scholarship players must have a number of blue chip players (four and five star players based on a composite of all major recruiting service rankings) that is greater than 50%. This means that, according to Elliott, a team will be unable to win a championship without at least 43 four and five star players on scholarship.
This blue chip ratio isn’t just a good theory. As of this 2022-2023 offseason, no national champion in the modern recruiting era has failed to reach the 50% threshold for blue chip talent. South Carolina’s roster may well be on its way to finding itself on the positive side of this threshold in short order. For 2024, South Carolina’s class is 4/4 in its commitments with the school currently heavily-involved for more elite talents, including several from the state of South Carolina.
Reaching the 50% mark to become eligible for a positive blue chip ratio does not guarantee a championship or even a successful season. However, if they want to move from a middling SEC program into a legitimate contender, the South Carolina football staff’s relentless recruiting efforts must continue. Barring a truly historic 2024 recruiting haul, the Gamecocks won’t meet the blue chip ratio threshold next year, but the current projections for the class would bring the program within striking distance of reaching the mark the following year.
That is, undoubtedly, good news for Gamecock fans. The even better news? There is no reason to believe that Shane Beamer is slowing down any time soon.