Shane Beamer: The SEC East is starting to make up ground on the SEC West

Alabama‘s loss to Tennessee on Saturday has brought life back to the debate of SEC East versus SEC West. Although the West has been widely regarded as the better of the two divisions over the past few seasons, this year’s results so far indicate a potential shift.

South Carolina coach Shane Beamer knows both sides well after serving as an assistant coach at Mississippi State, Tennessee and Georgia before taking over in Columbia last season. Asked his thoughts on the recent rise of the East in his Monday press conference, Beamer said it makes the SEC that much more difficult to compete in.

“When I first got in the SEC, I was a graduate assistant at Tennessee,” Beamer said. “That’s when Tennessee and Florida, the winner of that game was gonna play for the SEC championship and have a chance to play for more than that as well. By no means do you see the West slipping by any stretch of the imagination, but you certainly see the East coming back around for sure. There’s great programs, traditional programs that have a lot of pride. There’s programs that continue to get better.

“To me, it’s just one of those things that, if you’re gonna be in this league, you better recruit your butt off, coach your butt off and be as good as you possibly can be. Otherwise, it’ll eat ya up and spit ya out pretty quickly.”

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Beamer has the Gamecocks off to a 4-2 start this season, though they are 1-2 in conference play. The SEC West teams have a slightly better combined league record of 14-11 compared to 11-13 from that of East teams, and are also 6-3 in cross-divisional contests. However, two of the three remaining unbeatens in the league (Georgia and Tennessee) are in the East.

Georgia is also coming off of a national title victory, another big win for the East. But, as Beamer pointed out, the West also has a couple of recent national champions, meaning the league as a whole is in good shape whichever way you spin it.

“The West has had a national champion recently in LSU and a national champion recently in Alabama,” Beamer said. “Obviously, in the East we’ve had Georgia. You know across the SEC East — across the SEC period — it’s gonna be really good football.”

The SEC has won four of the past five national championships and will have a great shot at doing so again this season thanks to the improvement in the East. Beamer and South Carolina will have a chance to notch a win against an SEC West opponent in Texas A&M when they host the Aggies at 7:30 p.m. ET on Saturday.