Gamecocks’ spring football game in question amid stadium construction, AD says
Williams-Brice Stadium is a construction zone and, because of that, there is a chance South Carolina football will not play a spring game in 2026.
At the moment, one must check in and put on a hard hat to enter the stadium. And upon walking through the gates, you’ll notice that the concourse on the entry level is well, gone.
There is dirt and rubble and roped-off areas where underground construction is taking place. Demolition has already brought down the winding ramp in the southeast corner of the end zone and the Floyd Building underneath the scoreboard, and massive cranes are getting ready to drive 50-foot piles into the ground.
To complete phase one of the renovation, Contract Construction CEO Greg Hughes told The State, a 200-person crew is expected to work dawn til dusk, six days a week for eight months.
By mid-August, the upgrades will have re-shaped the home of South Carolina football. The concourses will be wider and feel more open. There will be far more bathrooms and concessions stands. The visiting locker room will have moved. On and on.
But that work is to make the stadium suitable for the South Carolina football home opener against Kent State on Sept. 5. It is not to have the stadium ready for a spring game in April.
“The construction is so compressed and it is so complicated,” South Carolina Athletic Director Jeremiah Donati told The State on Monday, “that we need to make sure we don’t disrupt what is already a very difficult task to complete all of these fan amenities before next season.
“Unfortunately, we may not be able to do that game,” Donati continued. “So I don’t know yet. We haven’t made any decisions, but it’s something we need to come to a conclusion on here in the next two to three weeks.”
The Post and Courier’s David Cloninger was the first to report the spring game being in flux.
Could USC’s spring game move?
If the game were to be nixed, it would not be uncommon. Just last year, Missouri announced it was canceling both its 2025 and 2026 spring games because of stadium construction. Florida State didn’t hold a spring game last year for the same reason.
“We’d like to play the game,” Donati said, “but the project is the priority and we can’t do anything to jeopardize that. We’re evaluating all of our options and seeing if it’s feasible to do this year.”
Per South Carolina, the 2025 spring game — which was played on April 20 — drew over 36,000 fans. Two years prior, with USC coming off an eight-win season, the Gamecocks reported that over 51,000 fans came out for the spring game.
Knowing that, it would make moving the game to an alternative venue far more unlikely. The second-largest football stadium in Columbia is at Benedict College, and that only holds 11,000 fans. The Gamecocks could play at South Carolina State’s Stadium (capacity: 22,000) or at some other massive venue in the Carolinas, but that would somewhat defeat the purpose of the spring game.
In the past, South Carolina has scheduled the spring game as part of a bigger athletic weekend and turned it into a community event that attracted thousands to Columbia. For example, the Gamecocks’ baseball and softball teams played home series the weekend of the spring game.
Is halting Williams-Brice Stadium construction an option?
Another option would be to only allow fans to sit in one part of the stadium, but even that is especially complicated this year. Construction on the west side of the stadium isn’t expected to be completed until May. The east side won’t be finished until June. And, even then, construction will be ongoing as crews build a multi-level tower in the southeast end zone and the shell of a massive student club space behind the north end zone.
“When you halt a construction project,” Donati said, “it’s not as easy as saying, ‘Hey everybody, stop what you’re doing. Take a few hours off while we play this game,’ because there’s all these codes and safety protocols. It actually takes quite a while to shut down a construction project.”
Perhaps in 2027, that would be a more-plausible option considering construction. Despite the fact that there is more work to do in phase two — Hughes said crews will work 24 hours a day for eight months — the majority of the work revolves around building suites and premium space on the west side of Williams-Brice.
As for 2026, before South Carolina can make the decision on whether to play the spring game inside Williams-Brice Stadium, it first has to know how playing the game would affect the construction timeline.
“It’s a tremendous amount of work to do it and I don’t know at this point that we can pull all that off and (the project) still stay on time,” Donati said. “We’re relying pretty heavily on our construction partners to put together a timeline to see if it’s even reasonable to ask them to do this.”
This story was originally published January 12, 2026 at 5:41 PM.
