USC talking with 2 or 3 schools about possible 12th football game, Tanner says

South Carolina intends to play a 12th game this season, Athletics Director Ray Tanner says. If that ends up being a regular season game, the goal is the play the contest at home.

South Carolina lost its Sept. 15 regular season game against Marshall on because of Hurricane Florence. The Gamecocks (1-1) travel to Vanderbilt this week.

“As we sit here today, my interest is playing at Williams-Brice,” Tanner said. “I’ll exhaust all resources to play another home game in Columbia.”

The two date options are Oct. 20 (South Carolina’s open week) and Dec. 1, which also happens to be the day of the SEC championship game in Atlanta.

“If we’re in Atlanta on Dec. 1 and things were to fall just right in the regular season, that will be our 12th game,” Tanner said.

Tanner said USC is “having conversations” with “two or three” schools right now about a possible game. He did not identify the schools but did say he talked with Marshall Athletics Director Mike Hamrick as recently as Tuesday.

“We haven’t ruled out that [Marshall] could be a possibility,” Tanner said. “We’ll continue having dialogue with Marshall.”

There is not a public timetable to make any sort of announcement.

“My intention is that we wouldn’t announce anything until we have a game scheduled. We’re not going to announce a contingency plan,” Tanner said. “At some point we will alert our fan base and the public if we’re going to play a 12th regular season game.

“There are a lot of balls in the air. We’re going to attempt to play a 12th game, if possible. It’s not an easy process.”

Muschamp said publicly he’d prefer not to play during the open week Oct. 20, which would involve playing 10 straight weeks without a break.

This story was originally published September 19, 2018 at 1:12 PM.