Shane Beamer deflects question on Virginia Tech’s fit in SEC

For better or worse, South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer is always going to be connected to his father, Frank Beamer. That means he’ll always be connected, in some way, to Virginia Tech.

As rumors of conference realignment continue to swirl, many people are wondering about what potential moves the SEC could make next. There is some thought that ACC schools would make cultural and geographic sense. On top of that, the ACC recently had seven schools publicly looking into the Grant of Rights. Virginia Tech was among them.

Even with the ACC looking to close its revenue gap with the SEC and Big Ten, that gap is still going to exist. Because of that, there are going to be rumors about teams.

During the SEC’s spring meetings, Shane Beamer was asked if he thinks Virginia Tech would be a good fit in the SEC.

“I think Virginia Tech has got a great fanbase and great support, and getting into the ACC was fantastic for them,” Shane Beamer said. “And I know what a big deal getting in the ACC was. They’d been a part of the Big East and I don’t know. That’s a question for somebody else. I’m just happy to be here.”

Beamer clearly has a ton of respect for Virginia Tech. His father brought the program to national prominence and he spent time there as the assistant head coach. However, he didn’t seem interested in talking about actual fit.

As for SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, who holds a lot more power in these decisions than a single head coach, has said that expansion is “not at the forefront” of spring meetings.

Shane Beamer on landing the South Carolina job

Shane Beamer landed the South Carolina job ahead of the 2021 season. Since then, he’s done a good job of making the Gamecocks more competitive in the SEC East, posting a 15-11 record with two bowl appearances.

Now, he’s opened up about how he actually landed the job in the first place.

“During the 2020 season, South Carolina was struggling and I was coaching at Oklahoma. You heard different things about the future of the program and what may or may not happen. So I was following it. Coaching the team at Oklahoma but also following the situation here at South Carolina. They made a change at the head coaching position on a Sunday. And then, I’ll be honest, immediately I was reaching out to whoever I could reach out to, to just make sure that they knew I was extremely interested in this position,” Beamer said.

“I got a call on the very next morning – Monday morning – from the search firm that was going to be handling the search. Just to tell me that I was a name that had come up and South Carolina wanted to do a phone interview with me. But the search firm made it clear, ‘Shane, it’s going to be really, really hard for you to get this job. There are sitting head coaches that want this job. There’s a lot of coaches that are interested in this position. It’s an SEC job, but they do want to have a phone conversation with you.’”

Despite being told he probably wouldn’t get the job and that a lot of other people wanted it who had better experience, Shane Beamer was confident he nailed the job interview.

“I was in my office in Norman at Oklahoma, I had all these notes spread across my desk. Took everything off my desk except for notes I wanted to talk about. And we talked two hours, and I don’t ever think I looked at those notes one time. It was just a very easygoing conversation, because in a lot of ways I had been preparing for this particular job for a long time, because I had been here and I wanted to come back,” Beamer said.

“And I remember afterwards getting in the car and calling my wife on the way home, and I remember saying to her, ‘I really think I’m going to get this job. That interview went really, really, really well.’ And I had been on interviews before where sometimes you feel good, sometimes you don’t feel good. But this was just different.”