South Carolina learns its bowl destination

South Carolina might have fallen short of its ultimate goal, which was making the College Football Playoff. But the consolation prize isn’t all too bad.

The Gamecocks will instead be making a trip to the most magical place on earth — or Universal if that’s more of their style.

No. 15 South Carolina will travel to Orlando, Florida for the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl and will play the No. 20 Illinois Fighting Illini. That game will be played on Dec. 31. Kickoff is set for 3 p.m. on ABC.

This will be the team’s fourth trip to the Citrus Bowl. They went there in 1975 when the game was known as the Tangerine Bowl. They also played in the game under the Capital One Bowl label in 2012 and 2014.

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Illinois had itself a nice year under Bret Bielema, going from a 5-7 season in 2023 to 9-3 this season.

It’s also been a similar year for South Carolina in that the program went from a five-win season last year to winning nine games in 2024. The Gamecocks started out 3-3 with losses to LSU, Ole Miss and Alabama and looked to be poised for a tough stretch run.

But from that point on, they never looked back and won their final six games of the season to reach the nine-win mark in the regular season for the first time since 2013.

South Carolina capped off the regular season with a 17-14 comeback win over Clemson, who will be off to the playoff as the ACC champions.

If the Gamecocks are able to win their bowl game, it would give them their first 10-win season since 2013. It would be their fifth time achieving this feat in program history.

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Beamer hopeful for very little player opt-outs with opportunity to ‘leave no doubt’ in bowl game

By: Jack Veltri

Normally, the first thing South Carolina’s players will do when they come in on Wednesday’s is go to their special teams meeting, just like they’ve done all year.

But as soon as head coach Shane Beamer learned of his team’s postseason fate the night before, those regularly scheduled plans changed. Instead, he wanted to have a team meeting first thing at 8 a.m. on Wednesday.

His reasoning? The Gamecocks were left out of the College Football Playoff picture, as they came in at No. 14 in Tuesday’s penultimate rankings. With the final rankings and bracket still to come on Sunday, it didn’t necessarily mean their playoff hopes were over. But when CFP committee chair Warde Manuel made it clear there would be no movement in the rankings for bubble teams like South Carolina, it was a done deal. 

“I’m not gonna lie, there was a lot of hurt and just shock and confusion in that room next door when we met at 8 o’clock,” Beamer said about the team meeting. “It’s my job as the leader to try and give them, when there’s confusion, give some clarity. And that’s what I tried to do some this morning. There’s a lot of things that I don’t understand.”

While the team won’t be preparing to play in a playoff game in a little over two weeks, they will have a bowl game later this month. They’ll learn when, where and who they will face on Sunday. 

After experiencing disappointment, this could be a situation like the one an undefeated Florida State team went through last year when it was left out of the playoff in favor of Alabama. The committee’s best “apology” for leaving the Seminoles out was a trip to the Orange Bowl to play Georgia. 

The main reason they were not in the playoff was due to a season-ending injury to their starting quarterback Jordan Travis. But here was their chance to go prove they were deserving, and that the committee made the wrong decision. 

Instead, Florida State gave up on the season and were down 29 scholarship players for the bowl game. The Seminoles would go on to suffer a 63-3 loss to Georgia, the most lopsided score in bowl history.

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