Breaking Down the Carolina Job, and Why Shane Beamer is the Man For It

by Chris Paschal

On November 14, 1931, Auburn beat Sewanee in a shutout at Birmingham’s Legion Field. It had been 32 years since the 1899 Iron Men of Sewanee had gone undefeated, a perfect 12-0. During that run, Sewanee played five games in six days throughout the South and physically dominated each opponent. Grantland Rice named the 1899 Tigers “the most durable team I ever saw.” According to the late, long-time journalist and author Wendell Givens, the night before that 1931 Auburn game, Diddy Seibels, the team captain of the 1899 Sewanee team was on what today would be described as a sports talk radio show.  Seibels recalled what made that Sewanee team so great. “Discipline was perfect. There were no jealousies, only the indomitable will to win.” 

Durability. Discipline. Will to Win. Those winning characteristics back in 1899 are the same characteristics that President Bob Caslen and Athletic Director Ray Tanner sought when trying to find the 36^th head football coach of the University of South Carolina. Those characteristics are why they chose Shane Beamer. 

In his introduction of Beamer, Caslen stated that the hiring of Beamer was “a day of great promise.” Promise for a fanbase that needed it. A fanbase that is rabid. Caslen would go on to say that athletics were important to the alumni, the students, and the fanbase. Athletics, and let’s be precise here, football, is woven into the identity of this university. And by having football woven into its identity, the job of head football coach at the University of South Carolina is a unique one.

This Is A Unique Job

I want you to think of another collegiate football program that is like the South Carolina Gamecocks.  Let me unpack that last statement a little bit better. I want you to think of another collegiate football program that: 

• has one of the top 20 largest college football stadiums in the country 
• consistently ranks top 20 ever year in revenue generated
• consistently ranks in the top 25 in recruiting rankings
• consistently produces NFL talent (currently ranked 21^st in the FBS)
• has up-to-date facilities
• an indoor practice field
• spends millions of dollars on its coaching staff
• yet, only has 27 more wins than losses in the history of its program. 

I’ll help you out. There isn’t another college football program like South Carolina’s. South Carolina football is unique in that it has the fanbase, the stadium, the facilities, the buy-in, and the support similar to that of elite programs throughout the country. Let’s put some names and faces to these rankings. In 2019, a year where South Carolina football went 4-8, the Gamecocks generated more revenue than Southern Cal, Washington, Nebraska, Iowa, Michigan State, Ole Miss, and even Clemson. Think about that. In fact, in a losing, pathetic, backwards season, South Carolina almost generated as much revenue as Penn State, Oregon, and Florida State. In 2015, South Carolina opened a new indoor practice facility. Four years later, South Carolina opened a new operations facility, fully equipped with a weight room, team meeting rooms, locker room, dining hall, and office spaces. The support and the buy-in from the fanbase, and the resources available, are on par with championship-caliber football programs. 

Yet South Carolina has an all-time .511 winning percentage. South Carolina fans, alumni, and boosters pour time, money, and sweat (literally) into the program just to watch their team flounder around in the wilderness. The closest comparison I could think of was the pre-2004 Boston Red Sox. You couldn’t find a more dedicated yet consistently heartbroken fan base than the Red Sox. The only difference is at least the Red Sox won a few pennants along the way. South Carolina has won a single conference title ever (the ACC in 1969). 

That’s what makes this a unique and difficult job. To put it simply, it looks like a winning program, it smells like a winning program, but it isn’t a winning program. That dichotomy has created a fanbase that is starved for a winner. And it doesn’t want to hear excuses about why winning here is not possible. Especially after witnessing the transformation of Upstate rival Clemson.

Clemson in 2008

No, South Carolina does not currently have the history that Clemson had back in 2008. Clemson in 2008 had already won a slew of conference titles and a national title in 1981. South Carolina doesn’t have that. But despite what some Clemson fans will tell you, an exercise in comparing Clemson football in 2008 with Carolina football in 2020 is not imprudent. 

In the middle of the 2008 football season, Clemson was sixteen-and-a-half seasons removed from their last ACC Championship in 1991. Since 1992, Clemson had won roughly 58% of their football games. Clemson in the fall of 2008 was not the Clemson of today. Not even close. Nobody in the South feared Clemson. But that lowly version of 2008 Clemson still had Death Valley, and rabid fans, and great recruiting, and those doggone orange britches they love to talk about. In other words, they had the pieces. They just needed the right head coach. Dabo knew how to sell Clemson. How to build Clemson. How to get Clemson back to being a winner. Not only that, Dabo knew how to make Clemson elite. It’s easy to sell Death Valley. It’s easy to sell a university where football is woven into its very fabric. Dabo and his ability to recruit and build a staff was the missing link. He didn’t need to get the fanbase on board. He didn’t need to get the administration bought in. Those things were already there. 

The same can be said for South Carolina in 2020. South Carolina’s winning percentage in the last sixteen-and-a-half years is roughly 58% – almost identical to Clemson’s back in 2008. And like Clemson in 2008, Carolina has all the pieces. And like Clemson fans in 2008, Carolina fans are demanding better. Building a program in the SEC presents more challenges than building a program in the ACC. But wanting a winner is commendable and doable.

Why Now Is the Time

Firing a head coach in the middle of a pandemic where college budgets are already strapped for cash raised a few eyebrows across not only the SEC but the country. But now was the time. Rightly or wrongly, I supported Muschamp almost until the very end. But after this year’s Texas A&M game, the writing was on the wall for me. Another time, probably by another person, Will Muschamp’s career can be dissected and broken down. This is not the piece for that. That said, keeping Muschamp heading into the 2021 season would have been a disaster. It’s clear that the locker room was broken, the culture was toxic, the coaches were discouraged, and the fanbase was a blend of both infuriated and uninterested. No recruit, no transfer, no new coordinator was going to fix any of that heading into 2021. An overhaul was sorely needed. 

But now is also the time to strike, because the SEC East is in turmoil. Kyle Trask leaves Florida after this season and Georgia is finishing up an uninspired 2020 campaign. But it’s not really about the Gators or the Dawgs. It’s about the Tennessee Volunteers. Steve Spurrier used to call it the “big three of the East.” Well right now there is a big two. In fact, Tennessee really hasn’t been a part of “the big three” in well over a decade. Kentucky and Missouri, while solid programs, don’t have the buy-in or football resources that either Tennessee or South Carolina have. Right now, it’s an arms race between the Vols and the Gamecocks to get to that third spot in the East. Tennessee is in just as much, if not more, turmoil as South Carolina. The fanbase has turned on Jeremy Pruitt. Recruits are starting to decommit. Things are not looking good on Rocky Top. Now is the perfect time to try to regain some footing in that race with Tennessee. 

But most importantly, now is the time for a new coach because the Clemson rivalry has gotten out of hand. Enter South Carolina President Bob Caslen. The former Superintendent of the United States Military Academy is no stranger to hiring football coaches. In 2013, Caslen was appointed as the superintendent. At that time, Army was in the midst of one of the worst rivalry losing streaks in college football history, having lost 11 games in a row to Navy. When Caslen was appointed, Rich Ellerson was the head coach. Caslen allowed Ellerson to coach the 2013 season. Army went 3-9 and lost to Navy again. That was all Caslen had to see. Caslen went out and hired an energetic, relatively unknown coach in Jeff Monken. Monken was hired for a plethora of reasons, but the main one was that he knew the Army-Navy rivalry, having coached for years as an assistant at Navy. With Monken at the helm, a complete turnaround of the program occurred. Army changed how they recruited, changed how practices were run, and changed the culture of Army football. The result? Army has won bowl games, completed seasons with double digit win totals, and most importantly, beaten Navy three times in the past four years. 

In my first conversation with President Caslen, he finished the conversation with “beat Navy, beat Clemson.” (No, he doesn’t routinely say “beat Navy” to South Carolina fans; I told him in the conversation that I was a lifelong Army football fan.)  Since the day he took the job as president, his mind was already focused on righting the ship and getting back to beating these guys. He needed a guy that he could not only trust and bring life into the program – he needed a guy who knew the Carolina-Clemson rivalry and how to win those games. Enter Shane Beamer.

Head Coach Shane Beamer

During his press conference, Beamer was asked about Clemson’s current winning streak against Carolina (having won six in a row). Beamer replied, “That program in the Upstate [is] on a pretty good run right now, but I was here before and we were on a pretty dang good run ourselves against those guys.” That run Beamer was referring to was a streak of five straight wins for Carolina between 2009-2013. Shane was on staff as the recruiting coordinator for two of those wins (2009-2010) and helped recruit a lot of the players that would carry on Carolina’s successes the following years. 

It has been discussed ad nauseam by myself and others about the merits of Shane Beamer being named head coach. But after his introductory press conference, I think most of the fanbase understood why he was the choice. His passion and his love for South Carolina cannot be understated. This wasn’t an ideal job for Beamer, it was his dream job. In his introductory press conference, Beamer mentioned that he never threw his South Carolina gear away and that in the ten years following his departure from South Carolina, he would record and watch every single post-game show so that he could stay up-to-date with Gamecock football. When he walked out onto the field at Williams-Brice for the first time since 2010, he got emotional. That matters. No, it doesn’t matter for wins and losses, but it matters in terms of getting this fanbase fired up, and engaged, and excited. And that translates into momentum, which is something this program hasn’t had in years.    

That passion will translate into recruiting. Shane Beamer not only is a dang good recruiter, but he knows other coaches around the country that are good recruiters. And he knows that the talent in the surrounding area is a lot more than 247Sports rankings and blue-chip recruits. Yes, from 2009 to 2010, Beamer went out and helped lock down some exceptional local and southeastern talent that were highly ranked and recruited: Alshon Jeffery, Marcus Lattimore, Stephon Gilmore, Vic Hampton, AJ Cann, Chaz Sutton, DeVonte Holloman, Kelcy Quarles, and Jadeveon Clowney (to a certain extent). But it wasn’t just a slew of four- and five-star guys committing that played a role in those dominant teams from 2009-2013. No, it was also two-star and three-star talents in Rokevious Watkins, Justice Cunningham, DJ Swearinger, Jimmy Legree, Connor Shaw, Ace Sanders, Nick Jones, JT Surratt, Sharrod Golightly, Dylan Thompson, Byron Jerideau, and Brison Williams. 

There is a lot of talent in South Carolina, eastern North Carolina (especially the counties along Highway 74), and rural Georgia that gets overlooked. When South Carolina was humming under Spurrier, yes, so many generational players were signing with the Gamecocks, but just as many “diamonds in the rough” were signing as well. Imagine Jadeveon Clowney without Devin Taylor (two-star from Beaufort, SC) and Melvin Ingram (three-star from Rockingham, NC). Imagine South Carolina without Pharoh Cooper (three-star from Havelock, NC) or Deebo Samuel (three-star from Inman, SC). Those types of guys weren’t signing with South Carolina under Muschamp. Yes, Muschamp recruited the Carolinas and Georgia well. But he also went looking in Virginia, Tennessee…California! It may sound like I’m nitpicking, and yes, South Carolina’s main problem under Muschamp wasn’t recruiting, but I would love for this staff to exhaust the Carolinas and rural Georgia (and maybe parts of Florida) first before recruiting nationally. Yes, Beamer’s connections to Maryland and Atlanta are excellent and should be utilized when needed. But you have enough talent in your backyard to win. It’s been proven. 

Beamer will address that. And he will bring life back into this program. He already has. One way that also will be done is through the staff he assembles. It was well noted that Beamer willingly took a lower salary so that he could assemble an elite staff. Who that is remains to be seen. I would expect Shane to try and raid coaches not only in the state of North Carolina, but at the University of North Carolina. Gamecock Central’s Wes Mitchell put it best when he said the Tar Heels are absolutely South Carolina’s biggest enemy right now. Not only is Mack Brown keeping talent in North Carolina (a state already mentioned as a pipeline of talent in the Spurrier era), but he is also plucking guys from the Palmetto State. 
All that being said, whether through recruiting or hiring a new staff or changing how practice is run, Beamer has to instill those championship principles that were just as true in 1899 as they are in 2020: durability, discipline, and will to win. Those principles are what establish a winning culture. The national media has been questioning this hire loudly. Heck, Chuck Oliver all but laughed out loud on his show on Monday, December 7^th when talking about Shane Beamer in Columbia. None of that matters. This is a fanbase that feels like they have their guy. President Caslen put it perfectly when he said there is a feeling of great promise. Best of luck, Coach Beamer.