One date off the table for South Carolina’s potential 12th game

South Carolina football will not schedule a 12th game on Oct. 20, its bye week, to make up for the Marshall contest canceled by Hurricane Florence, athletics director Ray Tanner said in a radio interview on 107.5 FM on Wednesday.

“We did have a talk about Oct. 20, Coach Muschamp and I. That’s 10 games in a row if you’re playing on Oct. 20, so we’re not going to play,” Tanner said.

Muschamp has indicated before Tanner’s interview that he was not enthusiastic about playing during the bye week in order to give his team needed rest.

That means any possible 12th regular season game would take place on Dec. 1, also the date of the SEC championship game. And while Tanner continued Wednesday to repeat Muschamp’s stated hope that South Carolina will play in that game, he said USC is in talks with three programs to play then, should none of them make their conference championship.

“There’s a lot of football yet to be played, so we’re not in the midst of scheduling anybody in the very near future. We are having some potential conversations with mainly three schools right now,” Tanner said. “We’re having some conversations if it develops into a situation where they’re not in their championship game and we’re not in our championship game, there’s a possibility we could play. Nothing definite.”

South Carolina 2018 football schedule

*=SEC game

Sept. 1 South Carolina 49, Coastal Carolina 15

Sept. 8 Georgia 41, South Carolina 17

Sept. 15 Marshall // CANCELED

Sept. 22 South Carolina 37, Vanderbilt 14

Sept. 29 at Kentucky*, 7:30 pm (SEC Network)

Oct. 6 Missouri*, noon (SEC Network)

Oct. 13 Texas A&M*

Oct. 27 Tennessee*

Nov. 3 at Ole Miss*

Nov. 10 at Florida*

Nov. 17 Chattanooga

Nov. 24 at Clemson

This story was originally published September 26, 2018 at 2:53 PM.