With SEC realignment, here's 3 yearly games South Carolina football fans should be glad to get rid of

Conference realignment has created drastic changes to the college football landscape. Not only will it be weird to see teams play conference games outside of their geographic region (here's looking at you, Big 10 and ACC), but some historically played rivalries are losing their every-year status. For South Carolina football, there will be no game in 2024 against the Georgia Bulldogs, Tennessee Volunteers, or Florida Gators for the first time in over 30 years.

With the removal of some games from the schedule, teams now will play other opponents more frequently. This year, the Gamecocks will take on the Ole Miss Rebels in Columbia for the first time since 2009 and will play the Oklahoma Sooners for the first time since...well, for the first time.

Theoretically, if the Southeastern Conference sticks to their guns with an 8-team SEC schedule and a 16-team league, the plan is that every team will play against one "permanent rival" each season (for USC, that is the Kentucky Wildcats) and rotate 7 home-and-home series against the other 14 teams in the league. This means that, in every four-year stretch, teams should play against each conference member at least twice.

For some, the schedule changes made life more difficult, while others have a clearer path to a good record thanks to dropping some of their typical games.

For South Carolina football fans, there are three yearly games that have been dropped that should be viewed as a good thing in Gamecock Nation.