Shane Beamer recalls the night he got the South Carolina job

The South Carolina Gamecocks are preparing to face one of the toughest opponents in the SEC this Saturday, the Kentucky Wildcats. The last time the Gamecocks faced Kentucky, South Carolina’s new head coach, Shane Beamer was busy being hired as their new head football coach. In his recent press conference, the Gamecocks head coach discussed what was happening when he was tabbed as the new head man to lead their football program.

You can listen to the audio clips below from 12:06 to 14:16 in the video or just read the transcribed versions of the audio below in the next few paragraphs.

“That was the night I got the job, right? I remember it pretty dang good….I remember that night well, for sure. I remember watching it on television and pretty cool phone call I got from Coach (Ray) Tanner and the rest is history,” Beamer said.

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Beamer was busy coaching the tight ends for the Oklahoma Sooners at the time he was hired. What made things even more chaotic was that he was stuck at home with COVID all week.

“I mean, I flipped back and forth just to see how we were doing….Yes, I was at home with COVID that whole week. So, I zoomed into every meeting and I was coaching tight ends, so [Austin] Stogner would have been in those meetings. I mean, I was running the tight end meeting from the upstairs room at our house, where I was isolating in. So, you prepare the tight ends at Oklahoma to play and then when you get to Saturday, it’s not like I can text Lincoln during the game about something I see that was going on with Oklahoma and Baylor that night,” Beamer said.

“Don’t get me wrong, I cared about what was [going on] with the guys that I coached, but I also knew that my life was probably getting ready to change one way or the other, based on the phone call that I was gonna get from Coach Tanner that night. And certainly, once you got that phone call, I wanted to watch as much of the South Carolina-Kentucky game as possible. But honestly, once that phone call happened, it was such a blur, I don’t even remember if I watched much of that game. After that, it was more what’s next and I gotta get on the plane tomorrow morning and fly to Columbia,” the South Carolina head coach said.

Last season, Beamer coached the Gamecocks to a surprising 7-6 overall record in his first season in Columbia, finishing the year off with a Duke’s Mayo Bowl victory over the North Carolina Tar Heels. This year, the team currently sits at 3-2 as they square off against the 4-1 Kentucky Wildcats.

South Carolina and Kentucky face off on Saturday, Oct. 8. The game is slated for 7:30 PM EST. The game will be televised on the SEC Network.