Why 2025 Carolina-Clemson football game was demoted to SEC Network
Five months ago, the possibilities felt endless.
With Clemson football coming off a 2024 College Football Playoff appearance, South Carolina football just missing the 12-team field and both teams returning major stars who helped them win a combined 19 games last year, their rivalry game felt like a shoo-in for a top TV channel.
And ESPN executives certainly bought into the hype surrounding the preseason No. 4 Tigers and No. 13 Gamecocks. The network publicly announced on June 11 that the 2025 Palmetto Bowl would kick off at noon on Nov. 29 in Columbia and air on one of the network’s top two channels, ABC or ESPN.
Then a funny thing happened.
When ESPN announced final details for this weekend’s rivalry game slate on Nov. 17, the Clemson-USC game had a new television slot: noon Saturday on SEC Network.
It was a subtle change – neither the ACC nor the SEC acknowledged it in their news releases for TV times last week. And from a fan access perspective, it’s a footnote, since SEC Network is a widely accessible channel on every major cable and streaming TV platform nowadays.
But the change in TV channel for Clemson-USC was an interesting bit of public back-tracking — and, as multiple sources familiar with the process told The State, was essentially a midseason demotion based on how poorly both teams had played.
For the first time since 2008, Clemson (6-5) and South Carolina (4-7) will meet with both teams unranked in the AP Top 25 and/or College Football Playoff Top 25. They’re a combined 6-12 (.333) against power conference teams and 3-11 (.214) against power conference teams that currently have winning records.
That doesn’t exactly scream “College Football Playoff seeding on the line.”
And it’s more or less why the Tigers and Gamecocks will be playing on the SEC Network, a secondary channel that isn’t included in Nielsen’s TV viewership metrics, while No. 12 Miami and No. 22 Pittsburgh (noon on ESPN) and No. 5 Texas Tech and West Virginia (noon on ABC) enjoy more lucrative time slots.
How last-minute channel change happened
How? According to an ESPN source, TV channel designations are not binding even if they’re announced ahead of time. That’s different from, say, kickoff time windows, which are announced months in advance under the new SEC-ESPN television contract and do not change.
But what channel a college football airs on is more fluid and can be subject to change as a season plays out, the source said. And, naturally, teams overperforming or underperforming relative to preseason expectations greatly impacts that.
Dropping Clemson-South Carolina from ABC/ESPN and moving the game to SEC Network was an ESPN decision, the source said, but the SEC league office consented to the change. (An SEC spokesman referred The State to ESPN for comment.)
The ACC was not involved in the decision because this year’s Clemson-USC game is being hosted by South Carolina and is therefore an “SEC-controlled” game.
A South Carolina athletics source said they hadn’t been told much about the reasoning behind the move. A Clemson athletics source said the school didn’t get a heads-up on the channel change until it happened last Monday.
That’s not entirely out of the ordinary, though. As The State previously reported, schools like USC and Clemson essentially have zero control or input over kickoff times and television channel placement, outside of giving their partners feedback throughout the year.
Often, they don’t get prior notice from their own conferences on kick times until a few minutes before they’re announced, so they can prepare social media graphics.
It’s worth noting decisions like these now have a monetary impact for Clemson. As part of the school’s settlement with the ACC this summer, the conference schools that receive the most television viewership can now receive additional money.
The exact math for that TV payout calculation was redacted for trade secret reasons in a copy of the settlement obtained by The State via public records request, but it’s not hard to imagine that multiple placements on secondary networks like ACC Network and SEC Network – and losing a rivalry game promised to be in an ABC or ESPN time slot – will help Clemson in that regard.
Neither school was particularly bitter about the shift from ABC/ESPN to SEC Network, though, per sources.
After all, Clemson and USC’s on-field records are what they are. Had both – or maybe just one – of the teams taken care of business, the shift wouldn’t have happened.
2025 Clemson vs. South Carolina football game
- Who: Clemson (6-5) at South Carolina (4-7)
- When: noon Saturday
- Where: Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia
- TV: SEC Network
- Betting line: South Carolina by 2.5 points
This story was originally published November 26, 2025 at 8:00 AM.
