Shane Beamer discusses Soulja Boy video, having fun at South Carolina

South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer wanted to get people talking about his program heading into SEC Media Days, and he definitely did. After his Soulja Boy intro video went viral Tuesday morning, Beamer revealed the details of how it all came together.

“I appreciate you saying I’m youthful, I don’t always feel youthful,” Beamer responded to a reporter. “We got a lot of great things going on in our program, great people in our program, and don’t get me wrong, we work really, really hard. It’s not easy being a football player at the University of South Carolina, it’s demanding, you’re held accountable for everything that you do on and off the field.

“But there’s also got to be some joy with what you do and we want these guys to have fun. I want this to be a program where when our players wake up each morning, they look forward to coming into our football facility each day. I don’t know if that was always the case before I got there, but they do now.”

Shane Beamer advocates for fun

After taking over the Gamecocks coming off a 2-8 record in 2020 under Will Muschamp, Shane Beamer pieced together a team with a former graduate student at quarterback to go 7-6 in year one. That reversal took a lot of work, but he doesn’t want the vibe in Columbia to be all work and no play.

“Anytime we get a chance to showcase our program, we want to,” Beamer continued. “That came together very quickly, Justin King, who heads up everything for us with our social media and creative design, is the best in the world at what he does. When he tells me he has an idea, I don’t need to ask what it is. I knew it was big because normally he’ll just text me or call me, but he actually picked me up because he wanted to present the idea to me… Knocked it out in three takes and had a lot of fun doing it as well.”

Although it received mixed reviews, the video of the second-year head coach dancing to Turn My Swag On now has more than 835,000 views. Beamer’s enthusiasm, paired with his 2021 turnaround and offseason transfer portal work, has South Carolina in the headlines once again.

Get that mic ready pic.twitter.com/4PtICIuh0Z

— Gamecock Football (@GamecockFB) July 19, 2022