Shane Beamer 1-on-1: South Carolina's head coach talks his path, personality and 2023 expectations

In a sport chalked with nepotism babies, Shane Beamer made sure he forged his own path.

After serving as Virginia Tech’s long snapper on the Hokies’ storied 1999 team that lost in the National Championship Game, Beamer had the itch for coaching, but rather than ride his daddy Frank Beamer’s coattails at Va. Tech, Beamer turned down a GA spot on staff. 

Leaving a place he loved and had spent his formative years was painful. But joining his dad’s staff just didn’t feel right. The optics would’ve look worse. Shane Beamer needed to go out on his own and prove that he belonged in the world of college football on his own merits. And that’s what he did. 

Close to 25 years ago, Beamer, now 46, left Blacksburg for Atlanta, kickstarting his coaching career as a GA at Georgia Tech under George O’Leary. Over the next 11 seasons, he worked for Phillip Fulmer, Sylvester Croom and Steve Spurrier. He had multiple on-field assistant jobs in the SEC before he ultimately took a position on his dad’s staff at Virginia Tech in 2011. Then before becoming the head coach at South Carolina, he was a part of Kirby Smart’s inaugural staff at Georgia and spent two seasons with Lincoln Riley at Oklahoma. 

That’s a resume stuffed with current — and future — Hall of Fame coaches, and in his office he sits in front of a backdrop of helmets — Tennessee, Mississippi State, Georgia and Oklahoma — that are touchstone markers for his coaching journey. 

“I’ve been blessed,” Beamer told On3.

And smart and determined.  

Shane Beamer’s surname undoubtedly helped open doors throughout his career, but he wouldn’t be in charge of a resurgent Gamecocks’ program entering Year 3 this fall if he hadn’t proven himself worthy of the position. He grinded as a recruiting coordinator at Mississippi State, South Carolina and Virginia Tech. He made sure he was a well-rounded coach on the field, working with tailbacks, tight ends, special teams, outside linebackers, corners and safeties at five different P5 programs. 

Beamer is open to how much he’s grown as a coach since he started working in the weight room at Georgia Tech back in 2000, but the one thing that hasn’t changed throughout all the tidbits taken from one stop to another has been his personality. He’s been unabashedly Shane Beamer since Day 1. 

“I understand the role that I’m in and the responsibility that it carries but I would hope people would say that Shane Beamer is the same guy that he was seven years ago when he was just coaching tight ends at Georgia. Or the same guy back in 2004 when I got hired as an assistant coach at Mississippi State,” he said. 

“I’m not the same guy. I’ve grown. I’ve matured. I’ve evolved. I’ve learned. But as far as how I carry myself, my personality, my character, how I treat people, that hasn’t changed and it won’t change.”

Beamer’s frenetic energy isn’t for everyone. He’s corny, almost overly so, but it’s authentic. He has a magnetic personality that has resonated with recruits and their families from when he helped Steve Spurrier land in-state stars like Marcus Lattimore, Jadeveon Clowney, Stephon Gilmore and Alshon Jeffery to now, when he beat out major competition to ink 5-star athlete Nyckoles Harbor out of Washington D.C. 

The buzziest word around Beamer is realness. It’s why even though some might take umbrage at his viral videos like his recent spoof from “The Office” or his TikTok dance to Soulja Boy before SEC Media Days last year, that’s him. It’s no act. 

You wanna see some real speed? pic.twitter.com/Ir6DwCnKzy

— Gamecock Football (@GamecockFB) April 6, 2023

Get that mic ready pic.twitter.com/4PtICIuh0Z

— Gamecock Football (@GamecockFB) July 19, 2022

“We are who we are. We embrace it,” Beamer said of him and everyone in South Carolina’s football program. 

“When I became a head coach I wasn’t going to try and be somebody that I’m because I feel like that’s how you’re supposed to act as a head football coach. Are there things that I’ve taken from Kirby Smart? Yes. Are there things that I’ve taken from Lincoln Riley or Philip Fulmer or Steve Spurrier, or dad? Yea, but at the end of the day I’m going to be me. I realize how blessed I am to be in this position. 

“There’s only 14 of these positions as a head coach in the SEC. It’s really high pressure and it’s extremely demanding. Every day is an adventure, but I’m going to enjoy the role that I’m in. Hopefully, me being me, and that realness, that genuineness resonates with people. I want to be approachable, not some standoff guy because I’m a head football coach in the SEC.”

Entering Year 3 at South Carolina, Beamer knows the pressure is on to continue the Gamecocks’ momentum. He’s exceeded expectations in his first two seasons in Columbia, so Cocky Nation is hungry for more success. After inheriting a team that went 2-8 in against an all-SEC schedule in 2020, he’s 15-11, capping last year’s regular season with a pair of historic upsets — dropping 63 on Tennessee and then beating in-state rival Clemson for the first time in eight years — that spurred a strong 2023 recruiting class. 

“We’ve made a lot of progress the last two seasons. There’s no doubt about it. We’ve accomplished a lot of firsts,” Beamer told On3. 

“But we have to keep going. We have to keep maximizing the potential of this team.”

And that’s the true challenge for the Gamecocks in 2023. In the last two seasons, South Carolina has been a team that’s overcome talent disadvantages thanks to a strong culture and some turnover luck — they’ve led the SEC in takeaways the last two seasons. Last fall, they looked destined for a frustrating finish to an inconsistent season before rattling off two incredible wins. So the question moving forward is how does South Carolina continue to climb up the standings in a deep — and deepening — SEC? 

Thanks to an uptick in recruiting and the return of headliners like Spencer Rattler and Antwane Wells, Beamer has started to close the gap on some conference rivals, and even Clemson. But “started” is doing some heavy lifting here, because even Shane Beamer admits South Carolina is nowhere close to “arriving” with Georgia and Alabama. 

College football is a zero-sum sport, and yet, a program’s progress isn’t always linear. Beamers understands this, and it’s why his focus this offseason has been to make sure the Gamecocks aren’t simply satisfied that they’re no longer a cellar-dweller in the league.  

“We can’t assume that because things went one way in 2022 that it’s automatically going to go that way again in 2023. So I’ve challenged our coaches to be better in every area,” he said. 

“We have to find better ways to do the same things. Don’t just be status quo. From the training room, equipment room, nutrition, the weight room, coaching, how you teach a drill or scheme, let’s be better in every area because we play in the toughest conference in America.

“Our in-state rival that we play every season is a perennial top program in the country with multiple national championships. We open with the defending ACC Coastal champions (North Carolina), so we have a really tough schedule. The people around us aren’t slowing down, so to me every single year because of the transfer portal and whatnot, every single year is a new year. It’s like starting over. You build on the foundation that you have, but the things that worked with the 2022 team may not work with the 2023 team because there’s so many new faces here. So we just have to put our heads down and go to work to try to get better each and every day. I know it’s cliche but it’s true. At the end of the season, hopefully, we look up and we are as good as we can be as the 2023 football team.” 

SHANE BEAMER REFLECTS ON WHAT HE LEARNED FROM SOME OF HIS COACHING INFLUENCES THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER 

I asked Shane Beamer to give me his immediate word association for several of his former bosses during his journey to becoming a head coach. Here were his responses. 

On former Mississippi State head coach Sylvester Croom:

“High character. A high character man who took over a tough situation at Mississippi State replacing Jackie Sherrill, NCAA issues. You hear coaches talk all the time about how they’re in it for the kids, they’re going to do things the right way. That man was. He is a high character, and had as much influence on me as a coach and person as anybody I’ve been around.”

On former South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier: 

“Swagger. You always hear about how teams take on the personality of their head coach and I think the teams he had here did. He was a guy who expected to win and he did. On game day, he never really got too uptight. He was always loose and confident, and I think our team fed off that.” 

On Georgia head coach Kirby Smart: 

“Intense. You hear all those stories about guys who work for Nick Saban, that every day in the office is like 4th-and-1, a 2-minute drill, and Kirby is the same way. Very intense, but he has a great sense of urgency every single day. He made me a better coach. Those were two really, really good years in Athens because I learned a lot about how to run a program. He made me a better coach. … He taught me a lot. Understanding what he was saying. He had a lot of great points. A lot of things he was right about. Things that I said or did as as coach, he was intense, even for a coach.”

On former Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley: 

“Innovative. It was a great experience for me because I was at Georgia at Year 1 with Kirby. So I saw everything he did as a first-time head coach. And then Lincoln got hired of June (that next season) the coach  (Bob) Stoops retired, I showed up in January seven months later. So I always felt that I really was there for Year 1 with him, too. Biggest thing, very innovative. He was so good at watching tape and seeing what a team did to an opponent the week before and how he could attack it or do something off of that. I used to love that we’d get together as an offensive staff early in the week and we’d all gotten our head start with ideas on the opponent and we’d get together and share ideas and it was like a room of mad scientists with all the things Lincoln would have drawn up on the board that he wanted to attack that specific week. And that’s what I really liked because every week it was something new or different that we hadn’t done before. He had a great feel for his team as well. He was an offensive coach, the quarterbacks coach, but he had a great feel for the entire team.”

On his dad former Virginia Tech head coach Frank Beamer: 

“Consistency. He never got too high or too low, and that’s really helped me as a head coach. Sometimes you see coaches on the sidelines in games go on an emotional rollercoaster based on what’s happening out there on the field. And it’s not that he didn’t get emotional or intense, or that I don’t either, but just being able to maintain that levelheadedness and consistency. And more importantly, off the field as well. Whether it be a tough loss or an unbelievable win, when you came back in the building the next day, dad was the same person. That’s one of the biggest things I took from him as a coach.”