Shane Beamer calls out newspaper for allowing Clemson beat writer to publish ‘embarrassing piece of journalism’ about South Carolina

After South Carolina smothered Vanderbilt, 28-7, to get bowl eligible, head coach Shane Beamer took a chance to unload on a local media outlet for an article published last November.

Beamer was seemingly upset about this article from The State, which posited that the Gamecocks program had taken steps back under him due to a point spread against Vanderbilt shrinking since their first matchup. Beamer’s ire was only fueled by it being penned by the paper’s primary Clemson beat writer.

“Yeah, we just continue to get better and that’s what we’ve done last season,” Beamer said. “And I think back to last year and this is not a shot at you, Jordan, I like you a lot, but your paper sometimes is a doozy. And last year, when we played Vanderbilt, y’all wrote one of the most ridiculous articles I’ve ever read in the history of journalism, where you had the Clemson beat writer write an article about how far South Carolina’s program had fallen in 2023 because we weren’t favored by more against Vanderbilt.

“That might’ve been one of the most embarrassing pieces of journalism I’ve ever read to say this team has fallen as a program in 2023 because they’re not favored by more against Vanderbilt. That in 2022 they were favored by this much against Vanderbilt, but in 2023 they’re not so all of sudden, they’ve fallen as a program. I mean that’s just some bush league stuff right there by that guy. Nothing against you.”

Beamer kept going, noting that the problems for South Carolina last year were often injury-related and credited Vanderbilt for being a program on the rise.

And Beamer wasn’t done there.

“[Demetrius] Knight told me coming off the field, ‘We’re just getting started.’ And I believe that,” Beamer said. “This is a group that’s very hungry. This is a group that has high expectations. Once again, there’s going to be a lot of things, tonight from this tape that we’ve gotta look at and get better in all three phases. But really proud of the guys to be able to come on the road and we’ve gotta get guys healthy. We’re like a mash unit tonight. I felt like Clint Haggard came up to me more tonight than ever in my time here about ‘So and so’s down, so and so’s down, so and so’s back up, so and so’s back.’ And that was on and on and on, so we’ve gotta get healthy, without a doubt.

“But, proud of the way that we’ve came for a program that had fallen apparently so hard a year ago when we played Vanderbilt. We’ve got a lot of work to do. We’ve made a lot of progress since then, apparently.”