South Carolina and Miami Cancel Home-and-Home Series by Mutual Agreement

With the SEC's newly formatted schedule taking effect next season, it seemed like it was only a matter of time before schools canceled games with other power four schools in the coming years. That time is now as South Carolina and Miami announced they have mutually agreed to cancel a home-and-home series on Tuesday morning.

The SEC adopted a new 9-game schedule for the first time in it's history this past offseason. The conference announced teams would have three annual fixed opponents with 6 rotating through the 2026-2029 seasons. In addition to this change, teams within the conference were required to schedule another power four opponent, or Notre Dame, each season.

Some teams, like the South Carolina Gamecocks, have already fulfilled this requirement against other schools, in this case Clemson. Since that annual rivalry wasn't going away anytime soon, the question remained, in a 12-team College Football Playoff field, would SEC teams cancel games against future Power Four opponents and replace them with lower level teams in order to keep only 10 games out of 12 against Power Four teams?

Today, at least for South Carolina and Miami, that seems to be the case. Beforehand the two programs had a schedule game for the 2026 and 2027 seasons, in addition to their in-conference and out of conference games. Here's who South Carolina has on the schedule thus far for 2026 and 2027:

2026:

Georgia
Kentucky
@ Florida
Mississippi State
Tennessee
Texas A&M
@ Alabama
@ Arkansas
@ Oklahoma
@ Clemson

2027:

@ Georgia
@Kentucky
Florida
LSU
Missouri
Texas
@Auburn
@ Ole Miss
@ Vanderbilt
Clemson

The dates and other two opponents for 2026 will be released later this fall, but it is unlikely that it will be against another Power Four team as of now. The College Football Playoff committee has shown in it's history to hold win-loss records in high regards when it comes to selecting the playoff field. Teams at 10-2 may get in over teams with a 9-3 record despite the 9-3 team have a tougher schedule.

This is just the first move, but expect to see more over the coming months and years from other SEC programs as they try to compete for postseason play.