South Carolina Football: Gamecocks’ 2024 schedule announced; USC faces tough road

South Carolina football and the rest of the SEC found out their schedules for the 2024 season tonight in a special edition of SECNow on the SECNetwork. If it seems a little late to find out next year’s schedule just over a year before the games begin, it should. However, the SEC is in a unique position heading into 2024.

The Southeastern Conference is adding two teams in Oklahoma and Texas in 2024, and the schedule had to be tweaked. A nine-game conference schedule is appealing to the league long-term, but ESPN (and its parent company Disney) are not in a financial place to pay fair market value for the addition game, so keeping an eight-game format was the right call.

However, with the additions of Texas and Oklahoma, things had to shift around. A custom, eight-game schedule was put together by the league and announced in a primetime slot on Wednesday night. Some of the schedule was leaked in the days and hours leading up to the show, but the entire SEC slate is now known.

South Carolina football’s 2024 schedule is listed below:

AT HOME:

LSU
Ole Miss
Missouri
Texas A&M

ON THE ROAD:

Alabama
Kentucky
Oklahoma
Vanderbilt

Gametimes, dates, and networks are not yet known.

What sticks out most about Carolina’s schedule (other than a date with the Alabama Crimson Tide at Bryant-Denny Stadium) is the lack of familiar SEC East rivals. Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee are not 2024 opponents for the Gamecocks, breaking 30+ year streaks. Georgia, in particular, was a rival even before South Carolina joined the SEC.

South Carolina will also travel to Norman, Oklahoma. The Gamecocks and Sooners have never played, so the meeting will be the first in the series. Long-time matchups with Kentucky and Vanderbilt (both on the road) will continue, and newer “permanent” games against Missouri and Texas A&M will also continue in 2024 (both at home).

It is unclear at this point if the custom 2024 schedule will have any bearing on a future 9-game schedule. The conference has said that future schedules will keep “historical rivalries” in mind. Does the Carolina-Georgia series not survive as a “historical rivalry” moving forward? Will one (or more than one) of the teams on the ’24 schedule become a “rival” to the Gamecocks for the sake of scheduling? Or does the ’24 schedule not factor in at all?

All in all, South Carolina football faces a tough road in 2024, but a difficult schedule is something that the Gamecocks are used to facing. However, for now, 2024 can wait.

2023 is the immediate focus, and South Carolina will open the schedule with a neutral-site matchup with the North Carolina Tar Heels in about 80 days.