Let’s just get it out there so we can all be on the same page — the winner of Saturday’s South Carolina-Clemson showdown won’t be in the Playoff unless more chaos ensues.

Clemson finally getting a win that’s better than a 4-point victory at 7-4 Pitt would help the Playoff argument, but unless a team that’s ranked 5-11 loses before conference championship week — something that could happen but they’re all at least touchdown favorites — I don’t believe the Tigers will make the field as a top-11 team (remember that the Big 12 or an AAC champ Tulane could covet that 5th automatic bid and get the 12th and final spot).

In addition to that, the case for South Carolina is even more chaos-dependent, with the Gamecocks having losses to both Alabama and Ole Miss, both of whom are ranked ahead of them with 3 losses and favorable Rivalry Week matchups at home.

If you believe that sanity will win out and we won’t see idle teams leapfrog conference title game losers to make the field, it’s an even tougher sell for those 2 teams. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m not. We’ll see.

But make no mistake. Playoff or not, Saturday is monumental for South Carolina.

It’s monumental when you consider that for the second time in 3 years, the Gamecocks can end Clemson’s Playoff hopes with a win in Death Valley.

By now, you know that. What you might not know is that the last time someone won in consecutive trips to Clemson was … 2010 and 2012 South Carolina. That was part of the golden age of South Carolina football. It’s not a coincidence that it coincided with the Gamecocks’ longest Palmetto Bowl win streak ever (5 games). At the time, of course, Clemson wasn’t known yet as the program that won a pair of national titles and played in 4 title games in the 2010s. South Carolina was the superior program under Steve Spurrier, which it showed during a 4-year run of AP Top 25 finishes.

It’s easily the golden age when you consider that besides that 4-year run, South Carolina had 6 other AP Top 25 finishes and there was only 1 other instance in which it earned 2 AP Top 25 finishes in a 3-year stretch.

This year has the potential to be one of those 3-year stretches with multiple AP Top 25 finishes. That can be all but guaranteed with a win on Saturday.

Take that for what it is. You know what matters? Winning meaningful games with a national audience, especially as a closing message before the Early Signing Period. To their credit, the Gamecocks have been taking care of ranked opponents in historic fashion. They beat 3 consecutive AP Top 25 teams for the first time in program history. One of those games, the Mizzou thriller, also marked the first time the Gamecocks won a matchup of AP Top 25 teams since 2014, AKA the final full season of the Spurrier era.

South Carolina has been 1 step forward, 2 steps back throughout the post-Spurrier era. That sounds harsh. It’s reality for a team that hasn’t put together consecutive 8-win seasons since the BCS era. One year doesn’t change a program’s image. Don’t believe that? Go ask 2022 national runner-up TCU about that. Granted, the finish didn’t do the Horned Frogs any favors that year.

The finish for South Carolina is to be determined. Two years ago, South Carolina couldn’t have finished the regular season on a better note by taking down consecutive top-7 teams. Even the thrilling back-and-forth bowl game loss to Notre Dame wasn’t seen as a setback.

Everywhere Shane Beamer went during that offseason before 2023, he was asked about “momentum.” As in, “How much momentum did your program get by winning those games?” And to Beamer’s credit, he answered the way a coach should in the modern era. It was massive for selling a vision to boosters who are cutting NIL checks. But did it guarantee year-to-year success just because South Carolina closed the previous season with a bang? Nope.

If “momentum” was real, South Carolina would’ve been a whole lot better than 5-7 in 2023. Momentum can only take you so far when there’s an 8-month offseason. Beating Clemson wouldn’t even guarantee momentum into a bowl game, Playoff or non-Playoff.

If South Carolina pulls out another victory in Death Valley but misses the Playoff, you could spin that in the Gamecocks’ favor, too. You would hear plenty of people in college football debate how many Playoff teams South Carolina could’ve beaten if it had gotten into the field. That hypothetical will forever work in the Gamecocks’ favor, just like how we’ll never know what last year’s Georgia team would’ve been able to do if it made the Playoff.

In a sport wherein perception is often reality, that’s significant. The perception of South Carolina under Beamer has been closer to “plucky” than “dominant.” This year’s squad, with the emergence of Georgia Tech transfer Kyle Kennard and true freshman Dylan Stewart on that vastly improved defensive line, did everything in its power to look like the latter. Part of that has also been the second-half emergence of LaNorris Sellers, which bodes well for the pre-2025 outlook.

But on Saturday, Sellers has a chance to do something that’s been all too rare for South Carolina in recent memory — get people talking at season’s end.

People will talk about the Gamecocks if they make a statement against Clemson. Maybe they’ll talk about them being Playoff-worthy, or maybe they’ll just talk about how scary of a team they’d be to face in a win-or-go-home scenario.

Either way, South Carolina has earned everyone’s attention. There’s no better time to impress the masses than on Saturday in Death Valley.

Connor O'Gara

Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.