One more game: Gamecocks to the Gasparilla Bowl to face the Conference USA champs
South Carolina football will cap off a chaotic, unusual, stressful 2020 ... with a bowl game.
The Gamecocks were invited to the Gasparilla Bowl on Sunday, giving the team one final opportunity to take the field this season. They will face off with Conference USA champion UAB.
The game in Tampa, Florida is at noon Saturday, Dec. 26 on ABC.
“It’s another opportunity to compete,” interim head coach Mike Bobo said. “It’s like I told our guys tonight — the season has not been at all what we expected. It’s been a very, very disappointing 2020, but guess what? We have another opportunity to put our name on something, and our name is going to be on the Gasparilla Bowl. And if we’ve got that opportunity, let’s make sure we put our best foot forward.”
In any other year, USC’s 2-8 record would preclude it from a postseason invite. But because of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on schedules across the country, the NCAA Division I council voted to do away with the usual .500 record standard for eligibility.
And the SEC had lots of slots to fill — with Alabama in the playoff and Florida, Texas A&M and Georgia all going to New Year’s Six bowl games, the league had eight other teams make bowls. Only winless Vanderbilt and LSU, who self-imposed a one-year bowl ban, were not selected.
By the end of the regular season two weeks ago, South Carolina was hobbled by injuries, opt-outs, COVID-19 cases and contact tracing and had just 46 scholarship players available for the season finale against Kentucky. But it is unlikely coronavirus cases and contact tracing will force the Gamecocks to opt out of the bowl game — The State was told that because of previous cases, such issues wouldn’t push the roster below the minimum to play, barring an outbreak in the QB room.
Since then, USC has had several players declare for the NFL Draft and another transfer. The exact numbers the Gamecocks will have in the bowl game is unclear, but Bobo said Sunday they had around 51 or 52 scholarship players available. Don’t count on South Carolina opting out the game like more than a dozen teams decided, many of them the result of having players vote to end a long season.
“I told them we’re gonna play in a ball game. And guys that wanna play, we’re gonna report back at this day. And if you don’t want to play, you need to opt out. We didn’t have a vote,” Bobo said.
With Bobo remaining as the interim head coach for this next game as he had done the three previous contests, new head coach Shane Beamer, hired shortly after the regular season ended, won’t be in charge for Saturday’s contest.
This will be South Carolina’s first trip to the Gasparilla Bowl, which has been in existence since 2008. The game takes place at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, the same place where the Gamecocks won the Outback Bowl to cap the 2017 season.
UAB and South Carolina have met three times in their history, most recently in 2012. The Gamecocks won all three matchups by double digits. The Blazers (6-3) defeated Marshall 22-13 on Friday in the Conference USA championship game and boast one of the toughest defenses in the Group of Five conferences and rank in the top 10 nationally in yards per play allowed.
“Defensively, they’ve always been stingy,” Bobo said. “They’ve got good football players. Haven’t watched a lot of tape yet, I just know who (coach) Bill Clark is and what he represents and how his football teams play. And I’ve talked to a couple coaches that have played these guys in the past and they talked about how physical his football team is. And I know they’re going to be hungry to play.
South Carolina’s last five bowl games
- Capital One Bowl (Jan. 1, 2014): USC defeats Wisconsin, 34-24
- Independence Bowl (Dec. 27, 2014): USC defeats Miami, 24-21
- Birmingham Bowl (Dec. 19, 2016): South Florida defeats USC, 46-39
- Outback Bowl (Jan. 1, 2018): USC defeats Michigan, 26-19
- Belk Bowl (Dec. 29, 2018): Virginia defeats USC, 28-0
This story was originally published December 20, 2020 at 5:29 PM.
