CLEMSON — With the Big Ten trying to push the SEC and ACC to a nine-game conference schedule, there has been talk that Clemson and South Carolina might have to end or at least move their annual rivalry game.

Right now, and pretty much every year since 1960, the Tigers and Gamecocks have played at the end of the regular season. The good news is that Clemson athletic director Graham Neff said, last month, the Clemson-South Carolina rivalry is “non-negotiable,” and the USC administration has basically said the same thing.

“I think it’s ironclad. Now, there’s people above me to make those decisions,” South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer said recently. “But I would never want that game to go away. Rivalries, and rivalry weekend, is what makes this sport great. I know what it means. We’re in a state in South Carolina, there’s no pro sports. That game is a big deal.”

Though the game might be safe, the day it will be played on is still up in the air, and it might have nothing to do with conference scheduling.

“Where it fits in the grand scheme (of when to play the game), that is certainly fair discussion,” Neff said.

And it might be due to the NCAA moving the regular season up a week.

Moving the college football season up a week was one of the topics discussed last week in Asheville, N.C., as 32 Division I Conference Commissioners came together for their annual three-day summer meetings.

The college leaders are exploring the idea of moving Week 1 to Week 0. It is a discussion that some are in favor of and others are not.

The FCS is expected to formalize a proposal that permits schools to begin playing in Week Zero. It would add a 12th regular season game to the schedule starting in 2026.

According to Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports, three years ago, College Football Playoff leaders spent several meetings discussing moving up the regular season by a week, which would shift rivalry games off Thanksgiving weekend, make conference championship weekend on that holiday and free up an extra weekend in December to hold rounds of a rapidly expanding playoff.

“The move from FCS to begin regularly playing on Week Zero may serve as a trigger for FBS,” Dellenger writes. “The two divisions often hold games against one another early in the season — quasi-preseason games for power programs looking to fine-tune a new team before bigger matchups on Labor Day weekend and beyond.”

At the moment, only a handful of teams have played in Week 0. There are just four games on the schedule in Week 0 for 2025.