South Carolina's latest bowl projections after dominating Oklahoma
Shane Beamer’s South Carolina football team smacked the Oklahoma Sooners on Saturday. The 35-9 thrashing revealed to the rest of the college football world something Gamecock fans already knew: when Carolina plays well, they are good enough to compete with anyone.
The game resulted in some shifts from last week in the Gamecocks’ bowl projections.
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ESPN’s Mark Schlabach and Kyle Bonagura consistently have included South Carolina in their bowl season prediction. This week, Schlabach picked a future matchup for USC against Boston College in the Birmingham Bowl. Bonagura, though, wrote that he sees a Texas Bowl date with Cincinnati on the horizon. The program has never played Boston College but is 2-0 all-time against Cincinnati. The Gamecocks have never been to the Texas Bowl. They are 0-1 in the Birmingham Bowl (a 2016 loss to South Florida) but also lost to UConn in the PapaJohns.com Bowl (a previous name for the game) back in 2009. The Gamecocks also fell in Birmingham in the Hall of Fame Classic Bowl back in 1979.
CBS Sports’ Jerry Palm left South Carolina out of his projections last week, but that has changed. The veteran sportswriter now has the Gamecocks meeting up with “Coach Prime” Deion Sanders’ Colorado Buffaloes team in the Las Vegas Bowl. If Palm’s projection comes to fruition, it will be the first football meeting between Carolina and Colorado. The ‘Cocks also have never played in the Las Vegas Bowl.
Brett McMurphy of the Action Network predicted a Music City Bowl appearance. In McMurphy’s hypothetical bowl season, South Carolina will play Nebraska and former offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield in Nashville. The last time those two teams played, USC whipped Big Red 30-13 in the Capital One Bowl. A trip to Nashville would be the program’s first Music City Bowl appearance.
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Athlon Sports’ Steve Lassan also thinks there will be a garnet and black presence in Nashville this December. According to Lassan, the Music City Bowl will feature a showdown between the Gamecocks and the Illinois Fighting Illini. Despite familiarity with head coach Bret Bielema from his Arkansas days, South Carolina has never met up with Illinois on the gridiron.
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The Gamecocks, now 4-3, have five winnable games in front of them. However, four of the five are against tough opponents as Texas A&M, Vanderbilt (in Nashville), Missouri, and Clemson (in Clemson) will provide a lot of resistance to the team’s bowl hopes.
Next up is a home contest against the Texas A&M Aggies on November 2nd following the Gamecocks’ bye. South Carolina won the previous meeting in Columbia back in 2022.
