Opening point spread released for South Carolina-Clemson football rivalry game
Opening lines have been released for next weekend’s highly anticipated Palmetto Bowl rivalry game between the Clemson and South Carolina football teams.
So far, there’s a consensus: Clemson as a slight home favorite.
Emphasis on slight.
As of Sunday morning, DraftKings lists Clemson as a 3-point home betting favorite against South Carolina for next Saturday’s game (noon, ESPN). Another major sportsbook, FanDuel, lists the Tigers as a 2.5-point home favorite and has set the over/under for combined points in the game at 51.5 points.
Another major sportsbook, Circa Sports, zagged a bit with its point spread and placed the Tigers a few points higher as a 5-point home favorite.
No. 17 Clemson will enter the game 9-2 (7-1 ACC) and No. 18 South Carolina will enter at 8-3 (5-3 SEC). Both teams will be ranked in Tuesday’s College Football Playoff Top 25 rankings, setting up the first CFP-ranked Clemson-USC game since 2017.
As such, the point spread for next Saturday is the closest it’s been in a decade. In recent seasons, as Clemson’s emerged as a national power, the Tigers have consistently been favored by one, two, often three scores over the Gamecocks.
If it holds, the current betting line (somewhere in the Clemson -2.5 to -5 range) will be the closest in the series since 2014, when the Tigers were a 4.5-home favorite against South Carolina, according to the Odds Shark database.
South Carolina was last favored against Clemson in 2013, per the site, and that was for a home game at Williams-Brice Stadium.
The Gamecocks were a 14-point underdog for their last trip to Clemson’s Memorial Stadium in 2022, and the current spread would be their best road spread at Clemson in 14 years. USC was a 1-point road favorite at Clemson in 2010.
Clemson is still in position to be favored in the rivalry game for a ninth season in a row, but the point spread has fallen a long way thanks to the Gamecocks’ upward trajectory. From 2015-22, Clemson was favored by at least 11.5 points in every meeting against South Carolina and 20 or more points on four occasions.
Both schools handled in-state FCS opponents on their senior days to set up a rivalry game (with 12-team CFP implications) between teams with 17 combined wins. Clemson beat The Citadel by 37 points, and South Carolina blew out Wofford by 44.
Both coaches gave brief initial thoughts on the upcoming rivalry game in their postgame news conferences.
“The best rivalry in college athletics, in my opinion,” USC coach Shane Beamer said.
“Goal of its own, season of its own,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said.
Clemson-USC rivalry by the numbers
Clemson leads the overall series with South Carolina, 73-43-4.
Swinney, Clemson’s longtime coach, is 9-6 all-time against South Carolina and his Tigers have won eight of the last nine meetings. USC’s Beamer is 1-2 against Clemson but 1-0 against the Tigers in Memorial Stadium after an instant-classic 2022 upset.
The Clemson-South Carolina rivalry was the second-longest running series in the country between college football programs before it was interrupted in 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic when the SEC opted to play a conference-only schedule.
Despite that interruption at 111 consecutive games (1909-2019), the Palmetto Bowl series is still among the nation’s longest and was tied for the 11th most-played rivalry game in the FBS (120 games) entering last year’s game.
The 2024 Palmetto Bowl will be played during the last week of the college football regular season and two days after Thanksgiving. That’s been the traditional spot for the Clemson-USC game in most meetings since the turn of the century.
This story was originally published November 24, 2024 at 9:38 AM.
