Rumors: Clemson football will have to travel to South Carolina during the 2021 season
There have been discussions – especially among Clemson’s football fans – that the Tigers and their rival in the state, South Carolina, could exchange years of accommodation to make up for the cancellation of the Palmetto Bowl in Death Valley during the 2020 season.
For those who don’t remember, Clemson and South Carolina were scheduled to play Thanksgiving weekend, but that was canceled when the SEC decided it would not play rivalry games in the state during the 2020 season.
Tigers were assigned to host Gamecocks and – because of the SEC’s cancellation – were left out and forced to find another opponent outside the conference to fill that vacancy. It ended up being The Citadel, which Clemson was scheduled to play as well.
Despite the discussions that Clemson football may receive to host this year’s game, it does not look like that will be the case
Robert Thorne MacRae of The Clemson Insider reported earlier this week that this no longer appears to be in the cards.
In the report, MacRae said the game will be played in Columbia in 2021 because South Carolina cannot afford the loss of revenue that would happen if the game were moved to Death Valley.
Once the SEC canceled the game, it would only have been fair for the Tigers to host consecutive games in 2021 and 2022 to make up for the loss of that game at home. Of course, it shouldn’t have been a big deal, since Clemson made the trip to Columbia for the first 57 meetings as part of ‘Big Thursday’.
Clemson may play tough and threaten to cancel his game with South Carolina for the 2021 season, but that will not happen.
In the end, however, we should not expect the decision to be fair and nothing will happen.
The Tigers will travel to Columbia for the final game of the 2021 regular season and, as a result, they will get their seventh straight win over the Gamecocks and that is really all that can be said.