South Carolina doesn’t need to be ranked, and that’s not an insult

Preseason rankings are supposed to signal progress. For South Carolina football, they’ve become a warning label. According to CBS Sports, the Gamecocks are opening at No. 25 in the preseason poll. And that ranking should feel like validation after a productive offseason- new coaches, new faces, real momentum in the Transfer Portal, real investment. Instead, for a large portion of a very cautious fanbase, it lands like a bad omen. Not because fans lack ambition. But because they’ve seen this movie before, and they know how it ends.

The Pattern Is the Problem

This isn’t superstition. It’s data. The Gamecocks notoriously win the games they should lose and lose the games they should win.

South Carolina entered the 2025 season riding the high of a 9–4 campaign, National Championship buzz, Heisman hype, and the belief that the rebuild had crossed from fragile to functional. Expectations followed. So did the ranking. And then reality hit hard: 4–8 and another reset disguised as “lessons learned."

It's that gap, between where the program is ranked and where it actually is, has become the most reliable constant in Gamecock Football. Obviously, the preseason polls don’t measure cohesion within a team. And they don’t account for the fact that South Carolina lives in the most unforgiving neighborhood in the sport, where margin for error doesn’t exist and “progress” can evaporate by mid-October.

Why Fans Flinch at the Number

Gamecock fans don't reject preseason rankings because they’re pessimists. They reject them because they have learned that external validation often precedes internal collapse. Being ranked changes the conversation before the product earns it. It turns growth into expectation. It reframes development as entitlement. And when the inevitable turbulence hits with injuries, portal misses, and schematic growing pains, that narrative flips fast. What should have been a season of foundation-building becomes another referendum on failure.

It is exhausting. And fans pay the emotional interest on hype loans they didn’t take out.

But...

This Rebuild Is Real and That’s Exactly Why Rankings Hurt It

The irony of it all is that this offseason has been productive. The roster turnover was necessary. The direction of the program seems clearer than it’s been in years. Which is exactly why the ranking is premature. Real rebuilds need oxygen. They need patience. They need weeks where winning ugly is what counts as progress and losses don’t trigger existential panic.

Preseason rankings do the opposite. They compress timelines and accelerate judgment. South Carolina doesn’t need to be told it’s back. It needs the space to actually get there.

Let the Results Do the Talking

The strongest programs don’t lobby for preseason respect. They accumulate it quietly and weaponize it later. If South Carolina is truly turning a corner, it won’t require a number next to its name in August. It will show up in November with consistency, in the team's competitiveness, and most importantly, in closing games that used to slip away.

Let the expectations come after the proof. Let the ranking chase the Gamecocks, not the other way around.