Shane Beamer recalls first interview with Nick Saban

South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer recalled his first real interview in college football and it was with Alabama coach Nick Saban.

When Saban first got the job in 2007, he interviewed Beamer for an assistant spot on the Crimson Tide staff. It was a whole new world to Beamer, who went from grad assistant to assistant coach at Mississippi State without a formal interview.

He joined Next Up with Adam Breneman and told the story.

“Now, I’ll be honest, the very first time I had a real interview for a job was 2007 when Nick Saban got the Alabama job,” Beamer said. “And he interviewed me for a position on his staff, I guess it would have been tight ends or tight ends and special teams. And, you know, at that point, I really hadn’t been on an interview. I was a graduate assistant at Tennessee and then got hired at Mississippi State as an assistant coach on the field and that really wasn’t. I think Coach Sylvester Croom liked me. He wanted to hire me. He knew me. 

“The person that had recommended me was coach Chrome’s offensive coordinator, Woody McCorvey. He’s at Clemson now. So I had enough people in my corner, and then the defensive coordinator was Ellis Johnson and Ellis Johnson, I’d known him since he had played for my dad at the Citadel back in the 70s. So there were a lot of natural ties.”

Beamer doubled down on his transition and mentioned it was just a natural fit to go from one place to the next. But Saban was a different animal.

“So the first real real real interview I ever went on was (when) Nick Saban gets hired at Alabama as the head coach and I’m one of the first guys that he interviews for a job,” Beamer said. “So if you can handle your first interview being with Coach Saban. I think you can handle anything.”

But Beamer clarified the meeting with Saban wasn’t exactly intense like the outside world expected.

“It wasn’t so much intense as it was this is a big deal with Nick Saban coming back to the SEC being the head coach at Alabama and one of the initial interviews is me,” Beamer said. “Now I didn’t get it. He didn’t offer me the job and I went back to Mississippi State.

“I went back to Mississippi State and then got offered the South Carolina job about a month later as well. So it’s funny how things work out for sure. But yeah, that was one that you look back on you’re like okay, you interview with Nick Saban, your first real interview. You can handle anything.”

Beamer didn’t get to work with Saban but became an assistant at South Carolina back in 2007. 14 years later, he was the leader of the program.