South Carolina football might be in the same conference as Ole Miss, but it feels like the two programs are on opposite sides of the world.

It’s been a decade since the Gamecocks last played in Oxford and nine years since ‘Sandstorm’ made its Williams-Brice debut in the 16-10 win upset over the No. 4-ranked Rebels. After Saturday, South Carolina and Ole Miss aren’t scheduled to play again until 2025, when they face off in Columbia.

Such is life in a 14-team SEC with a schedule that annually reserves space for six divisional games, four non-conference opponents and the same crossover rivalry game (**wink, wink, nudge, nudge**).

“It’s hard when you expand. You expand to the larger divisions or conferences, it’s just harder and harder,” South Carolina coach Will Muschamp said. “There’s a lot of people that are clamoring for certain rivalries to never come out of our league, which I agree with. I’m an SEC guy, I’ve been in this league for a long time, a traditionalist.

“There’s certain rivalries that need to remain intact. When you expand, though, this happens.”

RELATED: Jay Urich, Dakereon Joyner give South Carolina football a preview of Jordan Ta’amu

The last time South Carolina played Ole Miss, Muschamp was still the coach-in-waiting at Texas. Twitter was barely three years old and the latest iPhone was the 3GS model.

Marcus Lattimore, who just turned 27-years-old this week, was in his senior season at Byrnes High School. Dude hadn’t even pulled off one of the slickest Signing Day hat tricks of all-time when the Gamecocks upset the Rebels that night.

Yeah, it’s been a while. And we’ll go ahead and assume that Muschamp would agree that going just under a decade between meetings against a team from the other side of the league is, well, a bit too long.

Saturday will be the first time he’s faced Ole Miss as a head coach in the SEC. Florida did host the Rebels in 2015, the first season after the conclusion of his four-year run in Gainesville, though the two teams won’t see each other again until 2020.

At the current turnover rate for college football coaching jobs, it seems like there’s a more than likely chance that Dan Mullen and/or Matt Luke won’t be around for the rematch. Then again, it’s not really a rematch since Jim McElwain and Hugh Freeze were the coaches back three years ago. Heck, Freeze wasn’t around the last time South Carolina and Ole Miss played.

RELATED: Potential South Carolina football opponent for game No. 12 | Psychological advice comes from unlikely place

Of course, neither was Muschamp. That battle went down between Steve Spurrier and – no, not Ed Orgeron – Houston Nutt.

Somebody has to have a solution, right? Perhaps. But those conversations are usually reserved for the spring and summer, when SEC coaches gather for league meetings and media days.

As Muschamp noted, there are several variables in play. And it’s a tough nut to crack.

“Then you get into the argument of scheduling and do we need to be a nine-schedule team, do we need to have a rotator, do we need to rotate two? We got some people that don’t agree on what the divisions should be,” Muschamp said. “That’s what (SEC) Commissioner (Greg) Sankey and his staff are in charge of and I’ll let them handle all that.

“We’ll probably discuss it again.”

Consider this: South Carolina hosts big, bad Alabama next season in Week 3. It will be the first time the two programs have since 2010, when the Gamecocks upset the No. 1-ranked Crimson Tide at Williams-Brice.

South Carolina football hasn’t traveled to Tuscaloosa since 2009 and the Gamecocks won’t be back until 2024. Then again, maybe 15 years between trips to Bryant-Denny isn’t such a bad thing.