South Carolina inches up in College Football Playoff Top 25

As college football chaos rains down around them, South Carolina continues to win and the Gamecocks continue to inch up in the College Football Playoff Top 25 as a result.

South Carolina is now No. 15 in the latest iteration of the College Football Playoff Committee’s rankings which were released Tuesday night on ESPN.

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Once considered a longshot to make the 12-team field, the Gamecocks now appear to at least be within striking distance following a chaotic weekend of college football that saw six teams who were previously ahead of them in the rankings lose.

Facing in-state FCS foes this past week, both South Carolina and Clemson did their part, dispatching of Wofford and The Citadel, respectively, heading into one of the biggest rivalry weeks in years.

The Gamecocks (8-3, 5-3 SEC) and Tigers (9-2, 7-1 ACC) both currently sit as Top 15 teams with the one regular season matchup remaining. While it’s not quite a win-and-you’re-in situation, the winner of the matchup will hold on to playoff hopes, while the Gamecocks would be eliminated with a loss and Clemson would need a lot of help in ACC play to potentially sneak into its conference championship game and keep its playoff hopes alive.

South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer for his part is trying to keep his team focused on the task at hand as he has for the Gamecocks five-game winning streak that has seen them go from a bowl hopeful to playoff contender.

“Not that our players aren’t talking about it,” Beamer admitted. “I don’t think I need to say anything — they know. They’re not going to be in study hall tonight, they’re going to be sitting around on their phones and I’m sure they’ll see the rankings come out, whatever it is, and people will be talking about it as well.

“We addressed it maybe a few weeks ago, just the thing that we need to do is worry about what we can control and that’s winning football games and this is no different. We don’t talk about it. Not that that’s the right thing. We talk about, again, none of it matters if you don’t go out there and play well on Saturday, so we need to go out there and focus on playing well Saturday and everything else takes care of itself.”

Prior to this season, South Carolina was last ranked a Top 25 team by the CFP selection committee in 2022 when the Gamecocks were No. 20 in the final rankings after beating Tennessee and Clemson to finish the year.

Since the CFP era began, Carolina has been ranked two other times — once the week before in that same 2022 season and once during Week 13 of the 2017 season when the Gamecocks were ranked No. 24.

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This is the first season that the College Football Playoff has expanded from four teams to 12.

As a reminder, the committee’s top 12 teams won’t correlate exactly with the 12-team field.

The CFP will consist of the top five highest-ranked conference champions and the next seven highest-ranked at-large schools. The top four conference champions will receive the top four seeds and a first-round bye. The fifth conference champion will be seeded by its CFP ranking. If that ranking is outside of the top 12 it will be seeded 12th as the final team in the field.

The teams seeded 5 through 12 will fight it out in the first round with the winners advancing to the quarterfinal round to face the top four seeds.

The next iteration of the CFP Rankings will come out next Tuesday, Dec. 3, at 7 p.m. followed by the final selection show at noon on Sunday, Dec. 8.

The Gamecocks and Tigers are set for a noon kickoff in Clemson with ESPN carrying the action.

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