TV channel, kickoff time set for Clemson vs. South Carolina football game

Clemson’s home football game against in-state rival South Carolina next Saturday will be played earlier than usual.

The No. 10 Tigers will kick off against the Gamecocks at 12 p.m. noon on Saturday, Nov. 26, the ACC and the SEC announced Monday. ABC will broadcast the game from Memorial Stadium.

Clemson (9-1, 8-0 ACC) is hosting South Carolina (6-4, 3-4 SEC) in Death Valley for the first time since 2018. The Gamecocks played a conference-only schedule during the 2020 season affected by the COVID pandemic.

This is the first noon kickoff in the Clemson-USC series since 2019 in Columbia and the first noon kickoff at Clemson since 2014.

Four of the teams’ previous five matchups and eight of the teams’ previous 12 matchups had kicked off at 7 p.m. or later.

It’ll be the 119th all-time matchup between the longtime rivals, who first played each other in 1896. Clemson leads the all-time series 72-42-4 and has won seven consecutive games in the series dating back to 2014. That’s tied for the longest streak in rivalry history.

Dabo Swinney is also the only coach in Clemson history to win seven straight games against South Carolina. That streak started after his Tigers lost five straight rivalry games to Steve Spurrier’s Gamecocks from 2009 to 2013.

Entering next week’s matchup, Tigers have won five straight games against the Gamecocks by 21-plus points and South Carolina hasn’t scored a touchdown against Clemson since 2018. In the teams’ last meeting, Clemson shut out South Carolina and rookie coach Shane Beamer 30-0 in Columbia.

Before playing each other to end the regular season, both teams complete their conference schedules at home this week. ACC Atlantic Division champion Clemson hosts Miami, and South Carolina, which is bowl eligible for a second straight season under Beamer, hosts No. 5 Tennessee.

Clemson and South Carolina had met for 111 consecutive seasons from 1909 to 2019 — the second longest uninterrupted run in the country — before the SEC instituted a conference-only schedule for the 2020 season.