How Shane Beamer engineered a culture change at South Carolina

ATLANTA — The SEC has plenty of head coaches with eccentric personalities. From Mike Leach to Lane Kiffin and Sam Pittman, there’s no storage of characters. 

Add Shane Beamer to the list. 

South Carolina’s second-year head coach has frenetic energy. He’s overly expressive, and will glad-hand anyone he meets. But it’s authentic. He’s confident and comfortable in his own skin. He’s unabashedly Shane Beamer. 

Beamer, 45, arrived at 2022 SEC Media Days full of swagger, his name trending on Twitter after recording a viral TikTok video dancing to Soulja Boy.

“Knocked it out in three takes,” Beamer said, with a wide grin. 

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

— Gamecock Football (@GamecockFB) July 19, 2022

The video was silly for sure. Corny, definitely. But it served a purpose. 

“There’s also got to be some joy with what you do,” Beamer said. 

“This game’s hard enough. We want our guys to have fun. I want this to be a program that when our players wake up each morning, they look forward to coming into our football facility each day. I don’t know if that was always the case before I got there. They do now.

“Anytime we get the opportunity to showcase our program, we want to.”

Job well done. 

It’s obvious why South Carolina has received so much buzz this offseason. There’s a vibe around the program. The Gamecocks are coming off a 7-6 year where they shattered preseason expectations (a two-win team expected to finish near the cellar of the SEC again in 2021) and then Beamer infused the roster with more talent by adding former Oklahoma quarterback Spencer Rattler and a number of other promising playmaking pieces. 

Entering 2022, Beamer isn’t interested in halting any momentum for fear of not meeting expectations. He’s challenged his South Carolina team — particularly an offensive line that struggled mightily at times in 2021 — to want more. To be better. 

“We made great strides last season going from two wins to seven wins. A challenge for us is making sure our guys understand that going from seven to the next step, the next level, is going to take even more work,” Beamer said.  

“Everything that I’ve seen from our guys since they came back shows me that they understand that.”

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“He’s the reason for that change”

Beamer has a certain conviction in everything he says, so it’s understandable how — and why — players bought in so quickly in Columbia last fall. Guys like to be coached by people who invest in them. When he got the job, Beamer sat down with every player on the roster and asked them: “What can I do to improve and change things here?”

“Before coach Beamer got here, (the locker room) was all about me. How I can get to the league? What can I do to better myself?” South Carolina defensive end Zacch Pickens explained the team’s culture. 

“It was never: What can we do better? What can we do to grow as a team? It was always a me mentality. Nobody cared but nobody but themselves. When that went away and (Beamer) got us to start caring about each other, we started winning more games.”

“Coach Beamer did that. He’s the reason for that change. He showed us what it was like to win because we had never seen it before.”

Beamer quickly made South Carolina’s football complex a building guys were eager to come to every day. With passionate positivity, an emphasis on love and family, he instantly connected with a fractured locker room and established a culture change in Columbia. 

“I can only be me,” Beamer said. 

“I think sometimes guys become a head coach and think there’s a certain way you’re supposed to act because we’re a head coach in the SEC. And I was never going to try and be somebody I’m not. I mean it when I say like it’s not easy being a football player in our program. Our players work really, really hard and they are held accountable. And we are very demanding, but we’re not disrespectful. We’re coaching them hard on the football field, but we’re not disrespectful to them. They know that we genuinely care about them. We use the word love in our program a lot. Sometimes that may make people uncomfortable. Not us. We use the word love in our program a lot and have no problem telling each other that we love each other. And that helps us grow together as a team.”

Shane Beamer spent much of Tuesday expertly selling his past successes while recruiting future prospects to South Carolina. Oozing boundless energy, he used the word excited (or excitement) more than a dozen times in various settings when describing the current mood around the Gamecocks’ program. 

A 2021-encore won’t be easy, as South Carolina plays a brutal schedule this fall. The Gamecocks draw Arkansas and Texas A&M from the West, while also facing Georgia and Clemson, among others. But Beamer is enthusiastically embracing the challenge. He believes in the power of positivity. For Beamer, a better Gamecocks’ roster and a close-knit team will allow South Carolina to continue to climb up the SEC ladder.

“I know how blessed I am to be in this chair,” Beamer said. 

“I was coaching at Mississippi State back in 2005. My wife was working in media relations at Mississippi State and the SEC media days in Hoover. And she was there all week working. I drove to Hoover and took her to dinner one night and went to drop her back off at the hotel. Like how cool would be one day for me to be able to be in that hotel as a head football coach in SEC. And here I am, so I’m sure as heck going to enjoy it. It’s a high-pressure job. It’s demanding. I get it: You’re judged on what you do the 12 Saturday’s a year. If you don’t win football games, you get fired. But I’m gonna have a hell of a time as long as I’m here as the head coach at South Carolina and I’m having a blast right now.”