What would an SEC play-in weekend have meant for South Carolina in 2024?
The seemingly neverending wave of changes to the college football landscape shows no signs of slowing down with one of the latest major topics among the Power 4 conferences being what to do with championship weekend.
Once considered arguably just a few notches below the national championship, even the mighty SEC Championship game felt slightly less impactful this season and there were notably empty seats in the Mercedes-Benz Stadium as Texas took on Georgia.
Perhaps more important was the conversation about the potential negative impact of teams that made their conference championship games but lost and whether it was fair to potentially drop them from the College Football Playoff, a concern raised specifically by SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee.
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Conferences are reportedly moving quickly in exploring potential changes to the traditional championship weekend.
On3’s Pete Nakos reported that both the SEC and Big Ten have discussed, among many options, the idea of playing a three-game weekend. Potentially that would mean the No. 1 seed and No. 2 seed would face off for the trophy while No. 3 and No. 6 and No. 4 and No. 5 would face off. The top two seeds would receive auto-bids while the winners of the other two games would also automatically make the CFP.
Any such shift to this or a similar model would of course require major changes to the CFP to include in this case four auto bids for the SEC (and Big Ten).
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The SEC has, according to Nakos’ sources, even explored the possibility of a four-game weekend structured like a traditional eight-team tournament with all four winners receiving the league’s bids.
Such options are only being explored at this time but what would that have meant for the 9-3 (regular season) Gamecocks in 2024? A team that was on the cusp of making the CFP even without these potential changes?
South Carolina would have made the “championship weekend” as a six-seed and would have faced off with old SEC East rival Tennessee in either scenario.
While one could certainly argue that college football has experienced too much change at too rapid of a pace for most of us to even keep up, the idea of LaNorris Sellers and that South Carolina defense squaring off with Nico Iamaleava and the Vols for a chance to go to the playoff is a fun one. Or perhaps it’s just yet another “what if” to add to a special season that was this close to being even more.
