These three Florida bowl games make the most sense for South Carolina

Pack your bags for the Sunshine State — or at least plan to.

South Carolina (8-4) is more than likely headed to Florida for its second bowl game in as many years under head coach Shane Beamer. With a win, he’d become the first coach in program history to win postseason games each of his first two years at the helm.

The Gamecocks are a trendy team heading into bowl season. Wins over No. 5 Tennessee and No. 8 Clemson in back-to-back weeks have increased the attention on Beamer’s bunch and could lead to some changes in possible bowl destinations.

Here’s a look at where thing stand ahead of Sunday’s selections:

The Citrus Bowl — Orlando, Fla.

This is probably the high-end of the spectrum for where South Carolina could land. The Citrus Bowl also controls its choice of teams in a way the other bowls lower in the pecking order don’t.

The bowl selection process first goes through picking teams for the College Football Playoff and New Years Six games. The Citrus Bowl then gets first dibs on whichever SEC teams are left. From there, schools are filtered down through to the Pool of Six — Liberty, Las Vegas, Gator, Reliaquest, Texas and Music City Bowls — which are largely assigned by the league.

Heading into last week, the prevailing thought was Georgia, Tennessee, LSU and Alabama would head to the CFP and New Years Six. With LSU now 9-3 after dropping a game to Texas A&M and staring a fourth loss in the face against Georgia in the SEC title game this week, there’s a chance they could fall out of New Years Six consideration.

Should that happen, the Citrus Bowl would probably have its choice of LSU, South Carolina, Mississippi State (8-4) and Ole Miss (8-4). USC’s emphatic close to the season makes it a likely pick here over the Mississippi schools — and a good bet here if LSU were to beat Georgia in the SEC championship game and land in, say, the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans.

For what it’s worth, the most recent set of national projections all pegged LSU for the Citrus Bowl.

TaxSlayer Gator Bowl — Jacksonville, Fla.

The Gator Bowl has little say over which teams it ends up with, but an industry source with direct knowledge of the situation told The State on Wednesday the game would be ecstatic about landing South Carolina.

The source cited proximity to Jacksonville and the fact USC hasn’t played in the Gator Bowl since 1987, when Joe Morrison was still the coach in Columbia, as reasons why the game is hoping to land the Gamecocks.

Kyle Bonagura and Mark Schlabach of ESPN both predicted South Carolina to the Gator Bowl for a matchup against No. 21 Notre Dame (8-4).

It’s not known how South Carolina would feel about this game, but if there’s mutual interest, this feels like a logical landing spot should the Citrus Bowl be off the table.

ReliaQuest Bowl — Tampa, Fla.

This one is an oldie but a goodie.

South Carolina has played in this game seemingly a million times under its previous iteration as the Outback Bowl. (Technically, it was five times between 2000 and 2017.)

The familiarity here makes the Reliaquest Bowl a possible, if not probable, destination. The Gamecocks have been here. South Carolina fans love traveling to Tampa. It’s a win-win.

Brett McMurphy of the Action Network has USC playing Notre Dame in the ReliaQuest Bowl in his latest round of bowl projections released Monday afternoon.