Shane Beamer reacts to South Carolina-Miami football series cancellation
South Carolina football will no longer play Miami in a future home-and-home series, both schools announced on Monday.
The cancellation comes after both the SEC and ACC decided to change their scheduling model and play nine conference games (instead of eight) in addition to at least one game against a Power 4 opponent.
“I know our fans were looking forward to it,” Gamecocks head coach Shane Beamer said Tuesday. “I know I was looking forward to it, but you’ve also got to do what’s best for the team.”
Beamer went on to say it didn’t make much sense for South Carolina to keep the games with Miami on their future schedules.
“It kind of is what it is,” Beamer said. “With the SEC going to nine conference games ... not all nine conference games are built the same way. Nine conference games in other leagues aren’t nine conference games in this league — and when we also play Clemson at the end of every season.”
South Carolina’s built-in rivalry game with Clemson means the Gamecocks don’t have to go searching for an extra Power 4 foe.
But keeping Miami on the schedule would’ve meant 11 power conference opponents in the 2026 and 2027 seasons. In other words: No games vs. smaller schools to give USC a break from an already extremely challenging SEC schedule.
“As a competitor, yeah, you want to play against the best,” Beamer said. “And if everybody in the country, everybody in the SEC was playing 12 Power 4 teams, great, let’s have at it. But they’re not, and it’s an unintended consequence of it.
“It just is what it is, that every team in this league is going to play nine conference games, plus a 10th Power 4, I believe. But that doesn’t mean that they all have to play another Power 4, and we would have probably been the only one.”
While playing 11, or even 12, Power 4 opponents in a year could certainly bolster a hypothetical playoff resume for South Carolina, it also makes it harder to simply win games.
USC was not included in last year’s College Football Playoff after going 9-3 in the regular season and finishing with four wins over Top 25 teams. All three of the Gamecocks’ losses came against Power 4 teams that were ranked. Beamer and several others felt South Carolina’s resume was enough to earn an at-large bid to the playoffs, though the selection committee disagreed.
As of Monday, each team in the SEC except for Ole Miss and Georgia is playing a single Power 4 non-conference opponent, according to FBSchedules.
Georgia currently has two Power 4 teams on its non-conference slate for 2026 — and three in 2027. Ole Miss does not have an additional power conference team on its current schedule for next season.
With the Miami cancellation, South Carolina still has to add a new non-conference opponent for 2026 to go with Clemson and Towson on the schedule./
“Just to be completely frank, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to play 11 Power 4 games when everybody else in the SEC is only playing 10,” Beamer said. “Especially until we as coaches understand what are the metrics of the committee going to be. Because last year, it was clearly on how many wins you had, not who you lost to.”
