South Carolina’s football schedule is always hard. The 2023 start is especially brutal
South Carolina’s 2023 football schedule has been unveiled.
The SEC announced the league’s slates for next season on Tuesday night during its official reveal show. Here are some thoughts on what the Gamecocks will face next year:
The opening to 2023 is absolutely brutal
Stop me if you’ve heard this before — South Carolina’s schedule is hard.
It’s impossible to completely predict the difficulty of the schedule a full year out from when it will actually be played, but the Gamecocks received a brutal draw to kick things off next fall.
Five of South Carolina’s first six opponents reached bowl games in 2021, and all of those schools — North Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi State, Tennessee and Florida — should almost certainly reach the postseason again this year.
The season opener against UNC has been on the books for some time and will be a fun rematch of the 2021 Duke’s Mayo Bowl. Then comes contests against Georgia, Tennessee and Florida teams that figure to be in or around the Top 25 again in 2023.
South Carolina has had notoriously tricky schedules in recent years, but it’s not crazy to imagine a 1-5 of 2-4 start if things were to go completely off the rails.
Home sweet home
As tough as the start of the season is, South Carolina will enjoy the comfort of Williams-Brice Stadium over the final month of the 2023 campaign.
USC will play its final four games in Columbia — including facing Vanderbilt and Kentucky both in November for the first time in school history.
The latter stages of the slate will also include a Gamecocks vs. Gamecocks matchup when Jacksonville State comes to town. Head coach Rich Rodriguez’s squad will be in its first season of FBS play in 2023 after transitioning from the FCS and joining Conference USA.
South Carolina has been significantly better at home during Beamer’s short tenure as head coach, currently boasting a 6-3 record in Columbia compared with a 1-5 mark in true road games
Long road trips are sandwiched together
The 2023 season marks another rotation of “long flight” games for South Carolina with trips to Missouri and Texas A&M. For those making plans already, those contests will be played on back-to-back weekends.
South Carolina has yet to beat Texas A&M in eight meetings between the two schools as permanent, cross-division rivals. The Gamecocks were blown out in their 2021 meeting in College Station 44-14.
Missouri and USC have seen their annual meeting become a generally even matchup. The series is split 5-5 over the last 10 contests, though the Tigers have won three of the last four games played in CoMo.
USC 2023 football schedule
- Sept. 2 — vs. North Carolina (in Charlotte)
- Sept. 9 — vs. Furman
- Sept. 16 — at Georgia
- Sept. 23 — vs. Mississippi State
- Sept. 30 — at Tennessee
- Oct. 7 — OPEN
- Oct. 14 — vs. Florida
- Oct. 21 — at Missouri
- Oct. 28 — at Texas A&M
- Nov. 4 — vs. Jacksonville State
- Nov. 11 — vs. Vanderbilt
- Nov. 18 — vs. Kentucky
- Nov. 25 — vs. Clemson
This story was originally published September 20, 2022 at 8:00 PM with the headline "South Carolina’s football schedule is always hard. The 2023 start is especially brutal."
