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Muschamp said "sometime in the afternoon" for kickoff but it will be SUNDAY at Williams-Brice Stadium.
— David Cloninger (@DCTheState) October 6, 2016
Gamecock coach Will Muschamp announced this evening on his radio show that the Bulldogs and ‘Cocks will kick things off on Sunday afternoon at a yet to be announced time. If I were betting, I would wager on a time in the 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. range, as that will both allow fans time to get to Columbia (and avoid a brunch kickoff), while also letting Georgia get back to Athens reasonably early. Television? Who knows? One suspects that the ESPN family of networks will probably retain the rights to this one and may show it in lieu of Australian rules football or a Finland/Estonia soccer friendly.
Officials announced the decision several hours after LSU and Florida announced that their game will be “postponed”, which sounds a lot more like “cancelled unless it turns out to be necessary.” That creates enough of a scheduling headache for the SEC. By comparison this result seems pretty nondisruptive.
It was pretty clear from the outset of this saga that South Carolina officials were reluctant to agree to move the game from Columbia, as they had done last year when they played a “home” game against LSU in Baton Rouge following heavy flooding in the Palmetto State. The Gamecocks took a decisive loss in that matchup, and you cannot necessarily blame them for trying not to incur a loss of home field advantage (and game day revenue) for a second year in a row.
That being said, it would be a mistake to expect that things are going to be back to normal across the state of South Carolina by Sunday afternoon. If Matthew continues apace, this storm is going to do significant damage up and down the southern coast and potentially for miles and miles inland.
For its part, Georgia will now be playing on a short week as it hosts Vanderbilt in Sanford Stadium at noon on October 15th. That’s obviously not ideal. But at this point it’s a pretty small inconvenience in the grand scheme of things. We’ll be back with more details on this still-evolving story later. Until then . . .
Go ‘Dawgs!!!!