South Carolina’s 2019 SEC football schedule released

We’re still settling in to the 2018 football season, but the South Carolina Gamecocks’ 2019 slate has now been finalized with the addition of the conference schedule.

The Gamecocks open the season in Charlotte against North Carolina, then return home to host Charleston Southern. South Carolina gets an immediate and stiff test in Week 3, as Alabama visits Columbia for the first time since 2010. The Gamecocks then travel to Other Columbia for a date with Missouri, head back home to face Kentucky, then hit the road again for Georgia. The latter half of the schedule features a home date against Florida, a trip to Tennessee, hosting Vanderbilt and Appalachian State, then traveling to Texas A&M before the season finale against Clemson.

A few quick thoughts:

• The SEC slate is all kinds of strange compared to what we’re used to. Georgia, Vanderbilt, and A&M are much later in the season than usual.
• Alabama is the SEC opener. Yikes, but at least it’s out of the way early?
• On the bright side, no consecutive road games. I don’t know how that happened, and maybe it was just a happy accident, but I’ll certainly take it.
• Oh, good. Appalachian State. Yay.
• No out-of-conference cupcake before the Clemson game; just a good ol’ fashioned bye week. That’s not really a bad thing, but it may not be a good thing, either. It could really hurt not having a breather somewhere in the middle of that SEC grind. EDIT: It’s come to my attention that there are actually two bye weeks in 2019, with the first falling after Kentucky and before Georgia. Interesting, and much more helpful.
• This is a really, really hard schedule.

What do y’all think?