ESPN’s numbers didn’t pick a winner for the Palmetto Bowl — they picked a shrug.
Bill Connelly’s SP+ projection for Clemson at South Carolina lands on a flat, tidy 24–24, a scoreline that reads more like a placeholder than a forecast. And yet, even with the “tie” on paper, SP+ still gives Clemson a 51% win probability entering Saturday’s noon kickoff at Williams-Brice Stadium.
That’s the weird tension of this rivalry right now: the margins are small, the emotions are huge, and the models can’t decide whether the next snap tips the state.
Why SP+ Can’t Separate Them
Connelly’s system is built to be predictive, not sentimental — designed to capture what’s stable and repeatable, not what looks great on a résumé…