Shane Beamer reveals whether he prefers noon kickoff ahead of South Carolina-LSU clash
Shane Beamer joined The Pat McAfee Show on Friday ahead of South Carolina welcoming ESPN College GameDay to town, with the LSU Tigers coming to Columbia.
While the game is one of the top clashes on the slate, it’ll take place at Noon ET for the Gamecocks. With that in mind, Beamer was asked whether he prefers the early game, or the late, primetime slot. His answer might surprise you.
“Yeah, we’re at noon tomorrow, so we have to just get up and go. … I’d rather just get up and go. I hate sitting around all day,” Beamer told McAfee and the crew. “I mean, I love night games here. Don’t get me wrong, this place will be rocking. This place would be rocking if it was an 8 a.m. kickoff tomorrow. So, it’ll be rocking tomorrow at noon.
“As a coach, I mean, there’s been so much build up about this game. There’s so much excitement about this game. I’m excited to just get up and go play, and we don’t have to sit around all day.”
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Even if the lights aren’t the brightest at Noon as opposed to the night game, it makes sense why Beamer and company would prefer the early start. The waiting around is already painful enough as a fan of the game, but the time spent anticipating kickoff as a player is even worse.
Saturday is a huge opportunity for South Carolina, and Shane Beamer is happy we won’t have to wait through an entire slate to watch his Gamecocks in action. We’ll see if his team can come through against LSU in Week 3.
Shane Beamer describes the excitement ESPN College GameDay has created for fans, recruits
Moreover, South Carolina got everyone’s attention with their 25-point win last weekend in Lexington and now even more eyes will be on them now this weekend with College GameDay coming to Columbia.
Earlier this week, Shane Beamer spoke about the interest around their campus and program this week during his press conference. He said everyone, specifically recruits, was already buzzing after they beat Kentucky on the road by a final score of 31-6.
“I think it’s certainly – the way we played on Saturday? We had a lot of people that were already interested in us. But we were fortunate that, Saturday in Lexington? That was really the only game on. There were a couple of other ones but it was kind of the premier game across all channels,” said Beamer. “There were a lot of eyes that were watching our game on Saturday. A lot of recruits that were watching that game on Saturday and saw us playing freshmen.”
“Monday nights – we work late but we take an hour from 6:30 to 7:30 as a staff and just FaceTime recruits for an hour straight,” Beamer explained. “We probably talked to 30 kids last night. That’s what they were all saying was, ‘Man, y’all were balling against Kentucky!’ and whatever else. That defense, those freshmen, Dylan Stewart, and all that stuff. That’s great. That already had excitement.”
That then led to the pick by College GameDay to watch the Gamecocks’ matchup against No. 16 LSU. Their show coming to Williams Brice represents just how big of a game it is and where their team is.
“Then GameDay announced that they’re coming. That just created even more excitement with fans, recruits, our players,” said Beamer.
“Having, you know, those players? They watch that show and they know who those guys are. They know that, you know, Rece Davis, Kirk Herbstreit, Lee Corso and Nick Saban, Pat McAfee are going to be here, know who those guys are. Even if they don’t, they know that, when GameDay comes to town, that’s a big deal as well.”
On3’s Sam Gillenwater contributed to this article.