College football is changing. But Clemson-South Carolina game isn’t going anywhere

College football is leaving a lot of rivalries behind.

But Clemson-South Carolina is here to stay.

That was the message from athletic directors and coaches at both schools heading into this weekend’s game on Saturday night at Williams-Brice Stadium, which marks the 120th football meeting between the bitter rivals.

While it wasn’t exactly breaking news, it was worth repeating considering the nonstop realignments in the sport, both schools’ conferences adding new members for 2024 and the fact Clemson and South Carolina still have not formally signed a contract to play each other next fall.

“Clemson has new member institutions coming into their league,” South Carolina athletic director Ray Tanner said last week on 107.5 The Game. “We have a couple of new ones coming in. Our schedules are very, very difficult. They’re hard. All those things exist. But do you remove your rivalry game? For me, it’s no. You don’t. You figure out a way to make it work.”

Added Clemson athletic director Graham Neff in a Tuesday news conference: “It’s just a non-negotiable. And Ray and I talked about it. We have and we’ll continue to play that game. Period. However the landscape continues to change. No conversations otherwise. No mindset otherwise, absolutely.”

On the field, the Clemson-USC rivalry is as strong as ever. Storylines for Saturday include South Carolina trying to reach the six-win threshold for bowl eligibility after a 2-6 start; Clemson trying to spoil USC’s postseason chances and avenge last year’s surprising home loss to the underdog Gamecocks; and former President Donald Trump planning to be one of the 80,000-plus in attendance.

Off the field, though, the changing nature of the sport has raised some questions on whether the rivalry can stand as others around it have fallen to the wayside.

For one: Neff, the Clemson AD, has publicly expressed university leaders’ intent of doing “what’s best for Clemson” amid conference realignment, which could include leaving the ACC for another conference such as the SEC or the Big Ten.

South Carolina is preparing for the SEC’s likely move from an eight-game to a nine-game conference schedule as early as 2025, which would cut a non-conference game from its usual docket and make its schedule even tougher.

Both schools are also welcoming new schools to their conference next season — Stanford, Cal and SMU to the ACC; Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC — and will be at the mercy of the NCAA and the College Football Playoff when it comes to altering the overall schedule as the 12-team CFP model takes effect next year.

No matter. Realignment may be squashing other classic rivalries such as Oklahoma-Oklahoma State and Oregon-Oregon State, but Clemson and USC leaders insist the annual meeting of the state of South Carolina’s only two Power Five football teams has been and will be a sure thing.

It’s a commitment that isn’t lost on Clemson coach Dabo Swinney and South Carolina coach Shane Beamer, both of whom have spent decades in college football and grown to appreciate the homegrown quirks of such meetings.

“It’s different,” Beamer said. “But you also realize you better adapt and know that times are changing. That’s why I’m glad that this game will continue. … What we can’t ever get away from is what makes this sport special, and that’s the traditions and the environments and the stadiums on Saturday afternoons.”

Clemson and USC boast one of the nation’s longest-running rivalries. In fact, before the SEC opted for a conference-only schedule in 2020, blocking the teams from playing that year, they’d played 111 seasons in a row from 1909-2019, the second-longest active streak behind Minnesota-Wisconsin (1907-present).

Despite that interruption, the Clemson-South Carolina series was still tied for the 11th most-played FBS rivalry game in the country entering 2023 at 119 games.

“That’s one thing you worry about with where college football’s going because five years from now it’s totally different — that’s just the way it is,” Swinney said. “A lot of these types of games will go away. Already, they’re not playing Oklahoma-Oklahoma State. Are you kidding me? How the heck are we not playing Oklahoma-Oklahoma State? What? Can you imagine not playing Clemson-South Carolina? I don’t understand it.”

Could rivalry game date change?

Luckily for Swinney and the thousands of other South Carolinians personally invested in the rivalry, from the Upstate to the Midlands to the Lowcountry, that’s not a reality they’ll face.

Roughly a year out from the 2024 game, Clemson and USC still have not formally signed a contract for their next round of football games. But school representatives framed that as a minor delay to The State in September, and Neff echoed that Tuesday, saying an agreement is on the way.

That agreement’s expected to cover games from 2024-27, the standard four-year length for Clemson-USC contracts.

“I don’t believe we’ve struck a contract,” Neff said. “And quite frankly, we will and we need to, right? There’s the paper-working aspect of it.”

Neff also acknowledged Tuesday the date of the Clemson-South Carolina game could change, something Tanner has also addressed publicly.

The Tigers and Gamecocks have routinely played each other at or near the end of the college football regular season, including 16 straight games on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. They haven’t played each other before November in 64 years.

But the SEC’s move to a nine-game conference schedule and shifts in the college football calendar could potentially put the schools in a spot where they need to play in, say, September as opposed to November (a date change stipulation that’ll be addressed in the contract, as is common in those agreements).

“I think we’d have to be responsive to the changing landscape of college athletics as it relates to when that schedule is, right?” Neff said. “There’s been discussions nationally as relates to moving the whole season up a week and Week Zero and how that plays into the calendar of the month of December and CFP expansion.”

“So I think that’s squarely in a ‘Hey, we need to be strategic and adaptive to all aspects, changing calendar for the sport or otherwise.’ But at this point, no active conversations on that.”

Clemson South Carolina football game

Who: No. 24 Clemson (7-4, 4-4 ACC) at South Carolina (5-6, 3-5 SEC)

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia

TV: SEC Network

Line: Clemson by 7.5