Shane Beamer weighs in on craziness of Week 13 in college football and what it could mean for Gamecocks

Shane Beamer is a true college football sicko.

Fresh off coaching South Carolina to a 56-12 win over Wofford on Saturday, Beamer was just like every other college football fan in America. As soon as he got done with his postgame to-do list, he went home and immediately turned on the television.

“I got home and was with my family, and my parents were in town,” Beamer said. “So, we sat around and flipped back and forth between, I think, four games that were going on last night that we were interested in watching.”

[GamecockCentral: $1 for 7 days and 50% off first year]

If his sicko status were ever in question, he did what all crazy college football fanatics do. While Pac-12 after dark may no longer be what it once was, the fourth-year head coach stayed up late and was locked into one of the main west coast games going on.

“Usually, I go to bed after the night game is over,” Beamer said. “But I got glued to the Southern Cal-UCLA game and stayed up till two in the morning watching that like an idiot. I felt that this morning when I woke up.”

Beamer is watching these games out of pure enjoyment. As he put it himself, he’s just a fan of the game like everyone else.

Let’s be real, though. He knows what took place around the sport on Saturday. With the position the Gamecocks were in going into the day, he couldn’t help but notice a few teams ahead of them in the rankings lost.

“I think running off the field from pregame warmups, there was a fan yelling from the stands with the update on the Ole Miss-Florida score. So, I couldn’t help but not know that one,” Beamer said. “… And I’m not naive. I realized that some things went the way yesterday that we need them to go.”

In what ended up being another thrilling day of college football, six teams ranked inside the top 16 of the College Football Playoff rankings suffered losses on Saturday. Those teams who lost included: No. 5 Indiana, No. 7 Alabama, No. 9 Ole Miss, No. 14 BYU, No. 15 Texas A&M, No. 16 Colorado.

With South Carolina right behind these teams, sitting at No. 18, the Gamecocks are bound to move up a few spots when the new rankings come out on Tuesday. After the way things went in Week 13, they now have a 23 percent chance to make the 12-team playoff. With a win over Clemson this Saturday, those odds would go up to 58 percent.

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

But with three losses, there’s still some work to do to even have a real chance at being in the playoff conversation. South Carolina would still need some help with more dominoes falling during rivalry week this weekend. None of it matters, though, if the Gamecocks don’t handle business in their final game of the regular season. And Beamer knows that to be true.

“At the end of the day, I know it’s coach speak, but it’s true — the only thing we can control and the only thing that we can worry about is putting together a great week of practice and going to try and play well on Saturday at Clemson,” he said.

“And (Clemson is) in the same boat, and that’s what we need to focus on. So I watch stuff and keep up with it, but it’s not like I have a checklist in front of me of all the teams that we need to lose, and I’m like checking them off as I get the score updates. I’m watching it and I’m aware. And then it’s in here early this morning and get to work on Clemson and visit some with some recruits that we had in town that were here this weekend, visit with them and get rolling on that.”

Discuss South Carolina football on The Insiders Forum!