South Carolina Gamecocks Ranked Outside of the Top 15 in ESPN's Rankings

The South Carolina Gamecocks were ranked outside of the top 15 in ESPN's top 25 rankings.

The South Carolina Gamecocks have a lot of hype surrounding them entering the 2025 college football season. The program went 9-3 in regular season play and quarterback LaNorris Sellers emerged as a star in the sport.

With Sellers returning along with other names like Jalon Kilgore, Dylan Stewart and Nyck Harbor, there's an expectation that South Carolina will be competing for a college football playoff spot this season. However, according to ESPN's Bill Connelly, those might need to simmer down a bit.

Connelly released his post spring SP+ rankings and the Gamecocks came in at No. 17. These rankings are determined by returning production, recent recruiting and recent history, which then spits out a metric to determine the ranking of each team.

South Carolina's SP+ came out at a 16.1. For reference, Ohio State was number one with a 29.5, Georgia was fourth with a 26.9 and Michigan was 10th with a 21.5. The Gamecocks also rank 58th in the country for returning production at 58 percent. They return 66 percent of offensive production with ranks 33rd and 49 percent of defensive production, which ranks 82nd.

On top of losing a lot of production, the Gamecocks also have a brutal schedule to close the season. It starts with a road trip against LSU, followed by Oklahoma, then Alabama, back-to-back road trips against Texas A&M and Ole Miss and then Clemson to close things out.

However, as mentioned before, Sellers had an impressive season in 2024 as a first-year starter and it's likely he will only be better in 2025. And if college football fans know anything, it's that having a difference maker at quarterback can go a long way.