The search: How Shane Beamer landed his dream job

Shane Beamer still remembers the night his cell phone rang in Lubbock, Texas.

It was October 2020, and he was in his third season serving as a lieutenant for Oklahoma under then-head coach Lincoln Riley. Beamer sat inside his hotel room as the Sooners prepared to play Texas Tech the following night.

Back in South Carolina, the Gamecock football program was reeling during an off week. The team had been trounced by four touchdowns at the hands of LSU the previous weekend in Baton Rouge.

Beamer’s source—not anyone from South Carolina’s administration, he says—was calling to pass him a message: do not be shocked if a head coaching change is made in Columbia. The Gamecocks were sitting at 2-3 and a tough stretch loomed. Texas A&M was next, then Ole Miss, Missouri, Georgia, and Kentucky. 

To say the call grabbed Beamer’s attention would be an understatement. The Charleston native spent four years as an assistant coach under Steve Spurrier, longing for a return to George Rogers Boulevard as head coach. His dream job could be opening, but Beamer was careful not to get overly excited. The Gamecocks still had a coach, and his current team had a game to play the next night. 

“Just filed it away because I was busy with my own team at Oklahoma. Certainly, I was keeping up with it and trying to follow what all was going on,” Beamer recounted to GamecockCentral.com. “There’s only so much you could do.”

Following the off week, the Gamecocks were non-competitive in a 48-3 home loss to Texas A&M. By the time the next game, a road matchup with Ole Miss, rolled around, the writing was on the wall. South Carolina gave up 59 points in a loss to the Rebels, and Will Muschamp was relieved of his duties the following night.

The University of South Carolina now had an opening for a head football coach. Athletics Director Ray Tanner now had a search on his hands. And Shane Beamer now had a chance to go get the job he had wanted from the moment he left Columbia in 2010.

“The day that it was announced, from my standpoint, it was like full speed ahead trying to put myself into position to be here,” Beamer said.

GamecockCentral.com spoke exclusively with Beamer, Tanner, Senior Deputy Athletics Director Chance Miller, and other sources familiar with the 2020 head coaching search to piece together how the three-week undertaking landed on the former Gamecocks assistant.

The search appeared tidy and was certainly shorter than the 50-day plus affair from back in 2015. The proceedings were not without challenges, however. The search was conducted against the backdrop of a COVID-19 pandemic that had drastically cut crowd sizes, eliminated recruiting travel, and annihilated operating budgets across college athletics. It also forced South Carolina’s administration – and Beamer – to be creative during the process. 

Following is part one in a multi-installment series giving readers an oral history of the search’s events, as told by Beamer, Miller, and Tanner, with notes and commentary from GamecockCentral.com’s Chris Clark.

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RAY TANNER: You don’t want to be doing these searches, but they are invigorating. The challenges were not what I expected. Really, it was me and Chance and President (Bob) Caslen. President Caslen expressed an interest in being a part, intimately, with the search. As in taking all the visits and being in front of these coaches, not just coordinating or me calling in and briefing him. Boots on the ground, it was going to be the three of us. So we got organized and here we go.

CHANCE MILLER: We had a whole plan, notebooks and binders ready to go. 

TANNER: These search firms, they have researchers, have things at their fingertips and can turn things around quickly for you. We ended up having Chad Chatlos (Ventura Partners). That was the formal search firm.

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In hindsight, we said we’ll get out a little early. That helps from the standpoint that everything’s transparent, doesn’t necessarily help you with your timeline because these coaches are coaching other places. Although you may be able to have a conversation with their agent, it’s difficult to move it up because they’re engaged in their own programs.

MILLER: On top of that, you’re in the middle of COVID and these people are just trying to get their season completed and they don’t want to meet anybody or be around anybody.

The earliest stages of the search consisted of South Carolina’s administrators working through the first version of the candidate list, beginning with research and speaking with coaches via phone.

The administration knew that Shane Beamer would receive one of those phone calls. In 2015, Beamer’s name came up – not at the top of the pecking order – for the vacancy created when Steve Spurrier retired. Ray Tanner felt a more seasoned Beamer may just be ready for the gig this time.

TANNER: I wasn’t quite sure (in 2015). It’s like, he’s one of ours, but has he checked every box he needs to check yet? Has he attained everything he needs to make the leap?  I was more skeptical at that point, not about him as a person or football coach. He was still writing his playbook. This time, his playbook’s got to be complete. He’s kind of made all his steps. Is he going to emerge as the top guy?

SHANE BEAMER: I got a call from the search firm on Monday saying that I would be somebody they wanted to talk to. I think Wednesday of that week is when I did the phone interview with Ray and Chance. That was when I was in Norman (Oklahoma). 

I remember sitting at my desk, I cleared off the whole desk and I had all these notes I had written out on paper all across my desk. I just stood and was going to refer to these notes. I never even looked at them because there was so much in my head of what I knew I wanted it to be. 

Sometimes you interview for a job and you’re like shoot, there’s no way. Sometimes you’re, you know what, I think a did a good job but we didn’t connect, they’re not going to hire me. I can remember vividly walking to my car and calling Emily (Beamer’s wife) after I left the office that night. I’m not saying I thought I would definitely get the job, but I remember telling her, ‘I really think I may get this thing’. I thought the phone interview was just that good. Not so much me, but just the rapport that Chance, Ray, and I had and the confidence that I had in what I was talking about. 

There’s also, from my sense: man, you wanted this thing for a long time. Please don’t screw this up, Shane. More of the pressure from Emily at home to not screw it up. I remember feeling very confident during that phone interview. I think the first time I talked to Ray and Chance, I felt really good about how I’m going to make this hard for them not to hire me. And I don’t say that in an egotistical, arrogant, way. It’s just the feel I got on the phone that night.

As the administration geared up to move to the next phase, the first challenge of meeting candidates face-to-face was made manifest. President Bob Caslen was forced to quarantine and was unable to make the trip for the very first in-person interview, a meeting in Atlanta with Beamer on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

TANNER: We didn’t go to Atlanta saying he’s our number one, someone’s got to beat him. But he was high on our list.

When we met in Atlanta, he flew to meet us, we flew to meet him. You guys (media) didn’t get us, nobody tracked us. So we met in a hotel of choice, not my first time at that hotel.

He (Chance Miller) made arrangements to get a mini-suite, just more like a den. We walk in and I said to him, ‘this ain’t big enough.’ It wasn’t tiny, but we were in the height of COVID. I said ‘go back downstairs and get us a big room’. So he got us a big room and we spaced out. Not six feet, it might have been 15 feet.

Before the others arrived, Beamer was in the room alone with his thoughts, leading him to worry and overanalyze before the most important interview of his life.

BEAMER: For me, it was OK, this is COVID, and everybody’s still wearing masks. So it’s one of those, should I have the mask on when they come to the door? Do I not have the mask on? This first impression is probably going to set the tone for how this whole interview goes and I don’t want to ruin it by having a mask on and they don’t, not having it on and they do, so there was that thought process.

I do remember trying to be very COVID conscious that, when we sat down, I remember them alluding to the fact that we don’t need to wear masks for this entire interview. But it was very strategic: Chance you sit there, Shane you sit there, Ray you sit there, that way we’re somewhat socially distanced in this hotel room and we can talk freely without wearing a mask. That was probably the first thing that was said once we sat down.

MILLER: We were in this triangle area. It’s kind of a little awkward because we put him in the back of the room with no food, no water.

TANNER: No bathroom breaks, nothing. It was part of the test. No, I’m bad about that. I get going and before you know it it’s two and a half hours in. We just didn’t slow down. We just kept talking.  

Once the party got through the logistics, the interview ended up lasting over five hours in total. Beamer opted to keep things simple in terms of his presentation, although he did prepare a slideshow with his ideas on staff and culture. Those were handed to Miller and Tanner on iPads that he admits he borrowed from staffers at Oklahoma.

BEAMER: You hear about these head coaches, NFL head coaches, college coaches, and they have this giant book, this binder and all that. Nobody’s looking at that crap. I put together something to give Ray and Chance in regards to staff names and then a lot of what I wanted this program to be about. Core values and stuff like that. 

I’d interviewed for other jobs in the past and gone in there with multiple sheets of paper and all that and this one was one of those, I didn’t go in there in the interview with a lot. It wasn’t like I was just preparing for 24 hours. I knew what I wanted to say and what I wanted it to be about and wanted to convey to them.

TANNER: He was, as you would expect, very impressive. Very prepared. He gave both of us an iPad and I’m like, OK. I’m a little bit old school, iPads are nice, you probably have a plan. But, bells and whistles ain’t going to really resonate. I’m not easily swayed by that. But, his presentation was very good. It was more genuine and authentic.

MILLER: You could tell what a great communicator he was. Trying to build a foundation and program, you have to have that. Everything we talked about from culture to family, you could tell he really meant it.

Those two stops he made at Georgia and Oklahoma really helped him. He’s never been a head coach before. He was very methodical, here are all the steps and stops I’ve made that have prepared me to be a head coach. He had purposely taken jobs not for more money or to get to a better place, but to learn how to be a head coach. We joked that all the great people he worked for, by osmosis he had to pick up something.

BEAMER: I’ve always kind of been preparing for a head coaching opportunity. So, staff names, how you want your program to look, things that you believe in. Those are certain things you had in mind whether you’re interviewing for this job or any other job. When this job came open and I knew I would be interviewing for it with Coach Tanner and Chance, it was getting more specific stuff on paper in my mind for them. 

TANNER: He had a list of assistant coaches he would approach to fill his staff. Unlike a couple other coaches, he was very realistic. 

MILLER: What was really nice was, instead of throwing out a bunch of big names to try to be impressive, there were some names in there we asked a lot of questions about. They weren’t on the radar for a lot of people. He was very strategic about why he would have them in here from a recruiting phase or experience in a room. He had several options. I think he wore us out for a couple hours with that iPad saying OK, here’s the offensive line coach but if I can’t get this one and I get this wide receivers coach, here’s the other option I’m going to go to. He had probably about 52 options he ran us through.

When we were flying back, we were talking, trying to digest the last five hours. We paused and both said almost in line with each other, that’s going to be tough to beat. 

With his initial phone interview completed and an in–person conversation under his belt, Beamer had worked himself into a favorable position for the job. He’d impressed everyone who was a part of the search process and had numerous alumni and other key figures vouching for him along the way. 

BEAMER: It was a long process, but I really felt good about it after the phone interview. Then we met in person and I really felt good about it, but it’s also one of those, I know they have other people to talk to, there’s other people they’re interested in, there are other people interested in the job. A lot can happen. 

Then, a twist came that Beamer worried would derail everything.

Click here to continue reading with Part 2.

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GamecockCentral.com will release future installments of “The Search” in coming days, and the features will be for subscribers only. Join GamecockCentral.com now to unlock access to all our in-depth coverage of Gamecock sports and recruiting and access to our community on The Insiders Forum.

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