What Texas and Oklahoma in the SEC means for South Carolina’s future

The State caught up with a handful of national media personalities this month at the American Football Coaches Association convention in Charlotte to discuss the state of the South Carolina Gamecocks football program.

Here, we asked each pundit about how can South Carolina under Shane Beamer can fit into the SEC when Texas and Oklahoma join the league in the next few years.

Adam Rittenberg, ESPN

“I think it’s a program that how they recruit, how they add players in the transfer portal is going to be interesting to monitor. Because they’re still, from a tradition standpoint, they’re in the bottom half of the league, maybe the bottom quadrant. But now you have a guy who was part of elevating the program the first time around under (Steve) Spurrier and now has them in a pretty solid position.

“Adding Texas in Oklahoma — everybody assumes that’s going to make the league automatically deeper. It might sink the league a little bit at the bottom. I don’t think I don’t think it really affects Georgia and Alabama. But certainly in the middle of the league, that’s where you can see it impact. And maybe Texas turns things around and they’re a more relevant program. But I was just having lunch with an SEC assistant, who was like, ‘Texas hasn’t been relevant for more than a decade.’

“Oklahoma, we’ll see. Oklahoma has had more consistency, but I don’t think they’re a top four SEC program. In some ways, it could affect the South Carolinas more because you’re in the middle class. You don’t want to be in the lower class. You want to stay in the middle class. (Texas and OU) are two more members that I would say are like middle-upper class coming into the conference.”

Richard Johnson, Sports Illustrated

“I think it all depends on how they orient the (league). I imagine it’ll be pods, or whatever. You’re gonna want to win your pod or hold down your pod. I don’t know how they’re going to orient it.

“... What you can get in 16-team league is, maybe you won’t be Georgia, Alabama or top four in the league or whatever, but you’re gonna have a bigger middle class in the league. Where do you fit in to that? Now, it’s the SEC. It’s competitive. There’s gonna be a ton of churn. There’s going to be (American Athletic Conference) kind of seasons. If you fall back in the AAC one year, it’s done. Like Houston — fall back a year and you could get overtaken quickly.

“Bigger league, more competitive, who knows? But, man, A&M showed us you could have more talented guys and more money than God — doesn’t mean you win 10 games.”

Brandon Marcello, 247Sports

“It’ll be interesting just to see (1) the schedule rotation. We talk about there being more parity when the college football playoff expands. And then we’re seeing more parity because of the transfer portal and people want to point to TCU for the success it’s had this season.

“I think for programs like South Carolina or a Tennessee that are kind of on the precipice of maybe breaking through — in Tennessee’s case, maybe being a top five program year to year and South Carolina maybe being top-15 — depending on the schedule in the new SEC, there might be a time your roster is just right, coaching is just right, the schedule is just right because of the rotation, you might be able to all of a sudden be in a battle to be in the SEC championship game without divisions.

“It would take a lot to do that, but I think what we’re going to find out through a division-less SEC is that once every three to four years, we’re going to have some late-season tight races for the second spot in the SEC championship game. That’s really going to open the door for potentially some more parity.”