An ESPN college football analyst recently ran through what he sees as must-win games in 2023 – at least as things stand right now entering the season.

ESPN’s Greg McElroy gave a handful of games that he thinks are “massively important” to the upcoming season and will help define the college football campaign in 2023.

The third game that McElroy mentioned as a must-win game in 2023 is Clemson over South Carolina.

South Carolina, of course, beat Clemson 31-30 at Death Valley last November. It was the Gamecocks’ first win in the in-state rivalry series since 2013.

Clemson hasn’t lost back-to-back games to South Carolina since 2012-13, and the Tigers will look to avoid a second straight loss to the Gamecocks when the two teams meet again at Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia on Nov. 25.

Here’s what McElroy had to say regarding why he views that game as a must-win for Dabo Swinney’s team:

“They’re jockeying for state supremacy, and Dabo Swinney, coming off the loss or the losses that occurred in last year’s season, goes and makes an offensive coordinator change. Now Cade Klubnik, you’ve anointed him, you’ve brought in Garrett Riley. This is the year that you are going to get things going back again in Clemson offensively. … This has been a remarkably steady program, a program that would define a bad season is a season in which they lost multiple games. Now, is the standard unfair in Clemson, South Carolina? Probably not. The standard is the standard. They set the standard by being elite from 2015 all the way until 2021, they just haven’t maybe been quite as consistent in the last two seasons. But either way, if they lose to South Carolina again this year, then you have consecutive losses to South Carolina… We know that rivalry. We remember how Steve Spurrier treated that rivalry. We remember how Dabo treated that rivalry. If for whatever reason they lost to their in-state rival yet again, that would be a difficult game to spin.

“Now Clemson I think is still a really good program, and I think anyone that says otherwise is probably either jealous or angry about how good Clemson’s become. But anyone that says that Clemson is not still a legit program, I’m not sure they’re looking at it through the same lens as how they evaluate every other team in college football. But to lose on your home field to a team that hadn’t looked great for a vast majority of the season and a team that had just had an emotional victory the week before – that being against the Tennessee Volunteers – thinking maybe they’re going to show up, be a little sloppy. Well, it wasn’t them that were sloppy, it was Clemson that was sloppy, and special teams and mistakes by Clemson ultimately allowed the Gamecocks to steal that one there in Death Valley. I think that is a massive game for the Clemson program and for the perception of the Tigers moving forward.”

McElroy’s list of must-win games in 2023 (at least right now):

1. Alabama over LSU
2. Ohio State over Michigan
3. Clemson over South Carolina
4. Georgia over Tennessee
5. Any Pac-12 team over USC and UCLA/Any Big 12 team over Oklahoma and Texas