Shane Beamer recalls time at Georgia, lessons learned from Kirby Smart
Kirby Smart and his relationship with opposing coaches has been a talking point each week of the season so far. Dan Lanning at Oregon, Chris Hatcher at Samford and now, it’s a talking point once again this week with former Georgia assistant Shane Beamer the head coach at South Carolina.
Beamer was on Smart’s first staff here in Athens. He had worked at Georgia Tech, Tennessee, Mississippi State, South Carolina and Virginia Tech prior to arriving at Georgia, all after a playing career for his dad and the Hokies in the 1990s. Beamer spent two seasons as the tight ends coach in Athens before going to Oklahoma and ending up back in Columbia as the head coach, but the time spent with Kirby Smart certainly had an impact.
“Kirby Smart made me a better football coach,” Beamer said this week ahead of playing the Bulldogs on Saturday. “That was a really, really beneficial two years to be with him. It was a great opportunity for me to coach at a place like Georgia and live in a city like Athens but to come in and see the whole Nick Saban, Alabama process and see it implemented from day one. Kirby took over the program, I came in there right at the end of December right when he first got hired after we won our bowl game at Virginia Tech and then to be able to see everything implemented in year one.”
“That year was not,” Beamer continued. “We lost to Vanderbilt at home, we lost to Georgia Tech at home, struggled to beat Nichols State early in the season at home. But then to see how recruiting wise and continuing to build that program to where we were in year two, went and won the Rose Bowl and played for the National Championship and seeing how he handled coaches, seeing how he handled the day to day stuff, the recruiting part of it, practice, there’s a lot of things that we do here that are directly from things that I took from my time at Georgia. There’s things that we don’t do, we do a lot of things differently as well, but when you talk about all the places that I’ve been as a coach and coaches that I’ve taken things from as far as this organization and how we try to structure stuff, a lot of it came from my time with Kirby and I’m certainly really appreciative of that opportunity that he gave me and everything that I learned from him.”
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Beamer is now in his second season at South Carolina and led a big turnaround for the Gamecocks in year one. After South Carolina had missed bowl games in both 2019 and 2020, winning a combined six games, Beamer led the program to a 7-6 record including a Duke’s Mayo Bowl win over North Carolina last season. Now, with Beamer in his second season, even Kirby Smart can see from afar the kind of impact he’s had on turning things around in Columbia.
“When I hired Shane, I’d known him for a long time. He was interested in coming and I thought it would be a great opportunity to jump into SEC and be part of our program, and he did,” Smart said this week. “He’s created a lot of energy through his program through enthusiasm, their staff, they have an excellent staff at South Carolina. And just creating an environment of competition for their program to compete at a high level. Which South Carolina’s always historically played Georgia, you know, really hard. It’s usually the first SEC game most years. They recruit our state hard. We recruit their state hard. So there’s a lot of things to that.”
Georgia and South Carolina kickoff Saturday from Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia at 12:00 p.m. ET on ESPN.
