Shane Beamer hopeful teams will be able to play scrimmage vs. opponent

Shane Beamer loves the idea of teams playing other opponents for their spring scrimmages, echoing the ideas of Hugh Freeze and Nick Saban.

The South Carolina head coach thought it would improve the quality of spring ball and increase evaluations. On the surface, it’s a good idea and certainly more fan-friendly than an inter-squad scrimmage.

Not only could teams scrimmage in the spring, Beamer alluded to the long month of August as well.

“I’m hopeful you know,” Beamer said. “I’ve said it before, it’s something to me that makes too much sense not to be able to and, and whether it’s in spring practice or whether it’s in preseason camp as well to be able to compete against another team, we’d love to be able to do it. And then spring practice would love to be able to do it.

“And in preseason camp, you know, I’ve said it over and over again, we’re the only sport at any level that doesn’t get a scrimmage or a preseason game or an exhibition game, any sport, any level. We’d love to be able to.”

That’s where Beamer loved the idea of an August scrimmage to get more aligned with the NFL, at least in a preseason fashion.

“(I even saw someone) threw out the idea of practicing against another college in August like the NFL teams do,” Beamer said. “That’d be great as well. Just, August is great, but it’s a long month, guys. I mean, it’s August whatever day I think we report August 4 this year and then we play North Carolina a month later. I mean that’s a month and we are practicing basically every single day against each other. So to be able to just, you know, go out there if anything to just kind of, you think you’re pretty good going into the first game, but you don’t know. 

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“You don’t know because you’re practicing this yourself the whole month too. So to be able to just kind of change it up. I’d be all for spring practice, August practice, and I’ve been saying it but it’s not anything that we’ve spent a lot of time talking about and head coaches meetings or SEC meetings, but you know, who knows, maybe one day.”