Shane Beamer breaks down how he got head coaching job at South Carolina

South Carolina coach Shane Beamer appears to have the Gamecocks’ program heading in the right direction.

Beamer is entering his third season in Columbia and is coming off of an 8-5 year, with top 10 wins over Tennessee and Clemson.

The former Oklahoma assistant recently appeared on the Next Up with Adam Breneman podcast and reflected on how he landed the South Carolina job.

Beamer was previously on staff at South Carolina as an assistant from 2007-10. When the Gamecocks job came open after Will Muschamp was fired, Beamer knew that he wanted it.

“My wife and I loved it in Columbia. Two of our three children were born here. Loved living here. Loved coaching here with coach [Steve] Spurrier. And it’s one of those situations where we left and we always wanted to come back. So I always had my eye on this South Carolina program. Followed it, pulled for it, and always dreamed of wanting to be the head coach here,” Beamer said.

“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.”

USC made it known that it was also interested in Beamer, but it also gave him a realistic outlook on his chances of landing the job.

“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,” Beamer said.

“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.’”

On Wednesday, Beamer held a phone interview with Athletics Director Ray Tanner and Senior Deputy AD Chance Miller.

Beamer came out of the phone interview feeling optimistic about his chances.

“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.”

More than a week later, Beamer interviewed for the position in person in Atlanta. He met with South Carolina officials for about six hours and once again felt that the interview went well.

“Very thorough but very confident and easygoing, because I wasn’t talking about a program that I wasn’t passionate about. I wasn’t talking about a program that I didn’t know anything about. I knew about this program,” Beamer said. “That was a week-and-a-half later. And then the hard part was, at that point I keep hearing about from people here how great I had done and I was in the mix. But I think it was another week, week-and-a-half, before they called and offered me the job.”

Shortly after interviewing for the job, Beamer tested positive for COVID-19. He was in his last day of isolation when South Carolina called and offered him the position.

His Oklahoma Sooners were playing that night, but Beamer was unable to attend the game as he was in quarantine.

“I knew that South Carolina was going to make a decision that night one way or another,” Beamer recalled. “My phone rang about 9 o’clock and it was Ray Tanner, the Athletics Director here at South Carolina. Called, and I knew why he was calling. And I’m on the edge of my seat, because it’s a big thing. You see he’s calling and you realize your life is about to change one way or another. And he made small talk for four or five minutes about college football that day. And it’s like, ‘Yea, I saw that game earlier. That was great too.’ And then finally he said, ‘Well, are you ready to do this thing?’ And I told him, ‘Coach, I’ve been waiting for a long time to hear you say that.’”