National analyst's bowl projections snub Shane Beamer's South Carolina football team

South Carolina football fans are just two weeks away from watching the Gamecocks take the field for the first time in the 2024 season. The Old Dominion Monarchs are the first test on the schedule as Williams-Brice Stadium will be rocking for the 4:15 PM ET kickoff time (the game also can be watched on the SEC Network or streamed on the ESPN app).

The Gamecocks are viewed as a team with a large variance in potential outcomes this fall. Some analysts are predicting Shane Beamer's team to win 8 games, while other prognosticators are less enthusiastic and think a 4-8 campaign is incoming.

Shane Beamer's program missed a bowl last year and has a tough road to reversing course in 2024 with one of the top schedules in the country. Even so, expectations around the program are that bowl games are a minimum requirement.

This week, CBS Sports' Jerry Palm released their updated projections for bowl season, and while he included 11 SEC teams (Georgia Bulldogs, Alabama Crimson Tide, Texas Longhorns, Ole Miss Rebels, Missouri Tigers, Kentucky Wildcats, LSU Tigers, Texas A&M Aggies, Oklahoma Sooners, Tennessee Volunteers, and Auburn Tigers) the Gamecocks were not among them.

Completely snubbed from the list (along with the Vanderbilt Commodores, Florida Gators, Mississippi State Bulldogs, and Arkansas Razorbacks), Palm is projecting Carolina to have a losing record and be left out of a bowl game for the second year in a row.

In order to make sure that Jerry Palm's prediction doesn't come to fruition, the Gamecocks will be counting on a large group of newcomers to help push the team to a better finish than last year's 5-7 record. The starting lineup on offense could have as many as 7 players who joined the program from the transfer portal or 2024 recruiting class. The defense won't have too many newbies in the starting lineup, but the rotation will be loaded with first-year Gamecocks in the two-deep.