Shane Beamer breaks down how transfer portal impacts roster management
South Carolina has benefited from the transfer portal but also been hurt by it under head coach Shane Beamer.
The Gamecocks starting quarterback and top receiver in Spencer Rattler and Juice Wells both came from the portal. But this past offseason, starting running back MarShawn Lloyd and starting tight end Jaheim Bell both left for the portal.
Beamer recently spoke with Adam Breneman on the Next Up with Adam Breneman podcast about the challenges of managing a roster while navigating the transfer portal.
“You’ve gotta be more flexible from a numbers standpoint. … I was just looking at it in our staff room, as far as we have every position and above that position we have the number of guys that we want to sign in that particular year,” Shane Beamer said. “Whereas in the past, all of that came from high school. Well now, if on Signing Day you want to sign five offensive linemen, and you haven’t signed five high school offensive linemen, that’s OK because you say, ‘OK well now we’re going to go to the portal.’ … So that’s changed it from that standpoint, but certainly the roster turnover is extreme. I mean every single year is different.”
The transfer portal has also changed how the South Carolina staff divides up its time. Instead of only recruiting and watching film of high school players, there’s a whole other pool of players to watch film of and recruit.
“Staff wise, certainly before it was watching nothing but high school guys. Now you’ve certainly got to be aware and evaluate guys when they go into the portal. And it’s tough, too, because if you’re getting recruited in high school… they recruited you for three or four years all throughout high school,” Beamer said. “Well, guys that go in the portal, you may have 48 hours to decide if you want to offer them a scholarship and bring them into your program or not. And it’s tough. A guy goes in the portal, you’re reaching out to his high school coach, his coaches at the college he’s coming from. You’re trying to find out as much about a person as you can. And whether he’s the kind of person you want in your program.”
With so much roster turnover, you truly do have an entirely new team each year.
That makes building team chemistry a challenge.
“When we played Notre Dame in the bowl game this year on December 30th, and then a week and a half later classes started, so we sat right here in this team meeting room, I mean it was like so many new faces. It’s the transfer portal guys. It’s more high school young men graduate high school early. So you’ve got a bunch of new players who just arrived from high school – plus the guys that came in from the portal – and it’s just like a new team and it’s crazy. Because just a week-and-a-half earlier you’re sitting in the same room with a completely different team,” Beamer said.
“So it’s harder to build a team. There’s no question about it. You’ve gotta be even more intentional about that every year. And then you’ve just gotta be more and more flexible with roster numbers, because you really, truly don’t know who your team is going to be until like the middle of May. Because you’ve got a transfer portal window after spring practice, where some guys may leave your program. You may bring some guys into your program. And then you’ve got the high school guys that haven’t arrived yet that’ll be getting here in June.”