Shane Beamer describes what makes Old Dominion a potential upset candidate

Shane Beamer is very familiar with the Old Dominion football program.

Growing up in Virginia, got to know many college football teams across the Commonwealth – including Virginia, Liberty and James Madison – while his father, Frank, was the head coach at Virginia Tech. Beamer has also spent time recruiting in the Norfolk area, describing it as a “recruiting hotbed.”

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Because of this, Beamer is also familiar with the possibility of the Monarchs pulling off an upset on Saturday. The odds of an Old Dominion road win are long as South Carolina are currently 21-point favorites, according to ESPN BET.

But Beamer said the Monarchs have the personnel to “play spoiler,” despite those odds.

“For teams to, quote-unquote, ‘pull upsets,’ you need an athletic quarterback. They’ve got one. You need an opportunistic defense, that they have one. They’ve got size up front. They play a unique style that makes it difficult, particularly in the run game, to get everybody blocked and communicate to get a hat on a hat,” Beamer said. “And then, you need to be able to make plays on special teams. They’ve blocked the second-most number of kicks in the country over the last three seasons.”

Beamer also noted the fact that Old Dominion was involved a number of close games in 2023, many of which it ultimately lost. The Monarchs still won enough games to claim a postseason appearance in the Famous Toastery Bowl against Western Kentucky.

But the team could have been amongst the elite programs in the Group of Five last year, Beamer said.

“They’ve got good players, there’s no question about it,” Beamer said. “You look back at last year, they easily could’ve been an 11-win team. They had five losses last year by six years or less, so they very easily could be a team that we’re sitting here talking about an 11-win team that was in the mix for a New Year’s Six Bowl game.”

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Beamer listed the COVID-19 pandemic as one of the primary reasons why college football, as a whole, is more balanced now than it has in recent years. He pointed to one of his own players, Torricelli Simpkins III, as someone who was given fewer recruiting possibilities after losing his senior football season.

“There’s so much parity today in college football – it really is,” Beamer said. “Because of COVID, you have a lot of guys that got lost in the shuffle of recruiting and maybe didn’t get recruited their season year of high school like they would have if there hadn’t been COVID.”

This could have played a role in some of the Sun Belt Conference’s wins over Power Five programs in recent years.

Teams in the conference landed two major upset wins during Week 2 of the 2022 college football season. That week, Marshall defeated No. 8 Notre Dame, and Appalachian State defeated No. 6 Texas A&M. Both upsets also came on the road, in South Bend and College Station, respectively.

The Mountaineers made a similar national statement by playing spoiler well before the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2007, Appalachian State beat No. 5 Michigan 34-32 at Ann Arbor Stadium. The game quickly became one of the biggest upsets in college football’s recent memory.

Beamer said these upsets have forced Power Five programs to prepare themselves for each matchup with a Sun Belt team.

“You’ve got a lot of teams in the SEC and ACC and Big 12 that have lost to teams in the Sun Belt. (I have) great respect for Oklahoma State’s program. They won 10 games last year and played for the Big 12 Championship. But South Alabama beat Oklahoma State last year convincingly – in Stillwater, as well,” Beamer said. “The Sun Belt Conference has shown that you better be ready to play every single Saturday.”

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