Beamer hopeful for very little player opt-outs with opportunity to 'leave no doubt' in bowl game

Normally, the first thing South Carolina’s players will do when they come in on Wednesday’s is go to their special teams meeting, just like they’ve done all year.

But as soon as head coach Shane Beamer learned of his team’s postseason fate the night before, those regularly scheduled plans changed. Instead, he wanted to have a team meeting first thing at 8 a.m. on Wednesday.

His reasoning? The Gamecocks were left out of the College Football Playoff picture, as they came in at No. 14 in Tuesday’s penultimate rankings. With the final rankings and bracket still to come on Sunday, it didn’t necessarily mean their playoff hopes were over. But when CFP committee chair Warde Manuel made it clear there would be no movement in the rankings for bubble teams like South Carolina, it was a done deal.

“I’m not gonna lie, there was a lot of hurt and just shock and confusion in that room next door when we met at 8 o’clock,” Beamer said about the team meeting. “It’s my job as the leader to try and give them, when there’s confusion, give some clarity. And that’s what I tried to do some this morning. There’s a lot of things that I don’t understand.”

[GamecockCentral: Subscribe for $1 for 7 days]

While the team won’t be preparing to play in a playoff game in a little over two weeks, they will have a bowl game later this month. They’ll learn when, where and who they will face on Sunday.

After experiencing disappointment, this could be a situation like the one an undefeated Florida State team went through last year when it was left out of the playoff in favor of Alabama. The committee’s best “apology” for leaving the Seminoles out was a trip to the Orange Bowl to play Georgia.

The main reason they were not in the playoff was due to a season-ending injury to their starting quarterback Jordan Travis. But here was their chance to go prove they were deserving, and that the committee made the wrong decision.

Instead, Florida State gave up on the season and were down 29 scholarship players for the bowl game. The Seminoles would go on to suffer a 63-3 loss to Georgia, the most lopsided score in bowl history.

[On3 App: Get South Carolina push notifications from GamecockCentral]

In the same sense, South Carolina could experience a similar situation. But Beamer said no one has told him they are going to opt out of the bowl game. And he hopes that will ultimately remain to be true.

“I will say this, the players on this team are extremely motivated to try and go get a 10th win. That’s really important to a lot of guys,” he said. “Nobody’s told me they’re going to opt out. I hope they don’t. But some guys have a decision to make, as well. But like I told them, there’s nothing that you have to decide right now. Let’s see what happens Sunday. Let’s see where we’re going, who we’re playing. And we’ve got plenty of time to make those decisions.”

In what has been a great year for the program, the Gamecocks won their final six games of the regular season to finish 9-3. Because of that, they’ll have a chance to finish with 10 wins, something that hasn’t been done since 2013. If they can win their bowl game, it would be only the fifth time that they reached that milestone.

“One thing that I know we’re going to do is we’re going to respond the right way,” Beamer said in his message to the team earlier this week. “And no matter what they say that here’s your next opponent, whether it’s a bowl game or playoff game, a core value of our program is to compete. And we’re going to go compete. We’re going to handle it the right way.”

[Get our free newsletter! Don’t rely on search engines and social media for your Gamecock info.]

There’s no guarantee that South Carolina will have its full roster available for the game. In fact, it won’t be that way with some graduate players already entering the transfer portal. All players will be able to hit the portal starting on Monday, Dec. 9. And between that, there will be players with NFL Draft decisions to make.

So, by the time of the bowl game, the team could look a lot different. But with a 10-win season on the line, along with a chance to prove the naysayers wrong, Beamer expects them to be ready to roll for wherever their next destination will be.

“There was some doubt today, last night about how good this team is,” Beamer said. “We get an opportunity to go compete again and leave no doubt about what kind of football team we are.”

Discuss South Carolina football on The Insiders Forum!