Breaking down South Carolina football's 2024 SEC schedule, from best matchup to biggest surprise

COLUMBIA — South Carolina football learned its SEC opponents for 2024 on Wednesday, which include its first meeting with Oklahoma and its first trip to Alabama since 2009.

The Gamecocks won't see several longtime SEC East rivals when the conference does away with divisions in 2024 to bring in Oklahoma and Texas. It will be the first time since 1992 that South Carolina has not played at least one of Florida, Georgia or Tennessee.

South Carolina will face Alabama, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Vanderbilt on the road, while LSU, Ole Miss, Missouri and Texas A&M will come to Williams-Brice Stadium. The Gamecocks have met every opponent except the Sooners within the last five years but have not hosted LSU since 2008 or Ole Miss since 2009.

The SEC decided recently to maintain an eight-game conference football schedule for 2024, but it will reevaluate moving to a nine-game schedule for the 2025 season and beyond.

How the difficulty stacks up

South Carolina drew one of the most reasonable schedules under the division-less format. Just two teams on the Gamecocks' schedule were ranked at the end of the 2022 season, and they have wins over four of the opponents since Shane Beamer took over the program in 2021. The most challenging game by far is against Alabama in Tuscaloosa, but no other matchup is a guaranteed blowout on paper.

Compare that to a team like Georgia, which faces four opponents that finished 2022 ranked: Alabama, Mississippi State, Tennessee and Texas. Auburn and Tennessee are the only teams that will play both Georgia and Alabama, which have combined to win eight of the last 10 SEC championships.

2024 SCHEDULES:The 2024 SEC football schedule is out. See every team's conference opponents

Most interesting matchup: vs Ole Miss

South Carolina hasn't hosted the Rebels since 2009, but it last beat them 48-44 in Oxford, Mississippi in 2018. The all-time series is very balanced with Ole Miss leading 9-7, and four of the last five meetings have been decided by a single touchdown or less.

The Rebels, like the Gamecocks, aren't a consistently successful program but have been on the rise since coach Lane Kiffin was hired in 2020. Since Kiffin took over, they have won at least four SEC games and have finished above .500 each of the last two seasons. The Gamecocks have also steadily improved under Beamer and will likely have two top-20 recruiting classes on campus by 2024.

GAMECOCKS RECRUITING:South Carolina football lands Mason Love, No. 4-ranked punter in 2024 class

Biggest surprise: Not playing Georgia

South Carolina's rivalry with Georgia goes back even further than the Gamecocks' membership in the SEC. The two teams met every year from 1960-90 and resumed the annual series in 1992 once South Carolina joined the SEC East. Though the Bulldogs have dominated the series 54-19, the game sold out Williams-Brice Stadium in 2022.

Georgia's absence from the Gamecocks' schedule was particularly surprising given their geographic proximity. The conference placed emphasis on preserving in-state rivalries like Auburn-Alabama, Tennessee-Vanderbilt and Ole Miss-Mississippi State, but it kept others like Georgia's rivalry with Florida, Tennessee's with Alabama and Oklahoma's with Texas.