Beamer on NIL: 'Got to be competitive in that space'
Shane Beamer’s goal is to bring a championship to South Carolina football. During a recent appearance on the No Stoplights Podcast with Ken Ard, the fourth-year head coach laid out what he believes the winning formula is in Columbia.
“You look around college athletics, there’s no secret that the best teams are the ones that have the best players,” Beamer told Ard. ‘You combine that with culture and that’s how you win championships.”
The Gamecocks’ head man noted that he thinks that USC has one of those key elements – the culture – in place.
“But we’ve also got to be up there where our competitors are from a NIL standpoint,” he said.
Beamer agreed that without a strong NIL program that can help attract – and retain – top talent for the Gamecocks, it will difficult to win anything of substance.
“People say to me, coach, we can’t wait til you win a championship. Well, it’s going to be hard in today’s time if you’re not competitive from an NIL standpoint. We don’t want to be one of the bottom-third teams in the SEC. Well, it’s the same thing from an NIL standpoint.”
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In college athletics, collective bargaining and revenue sharing seem right around the corner, somewhere in the not-too-distant future.
Until then, a model exists in which the primary source of NIL compensation and opportunities comes from donor-funded collectives.
Some Gamecock fans have expressed concern that joining South Carolina’s collective – Garnet Trust – at a $10 a month level will not move the needle. Beamer pushed back against that notion.
“No one’s saying we have to have the biggest collective in college football. I don’t want that. We don’t need that. Every little bit helps. We are grateful and our student-athletes are grateful for anything. It all adds up. We don’t need anyone thinking, I’m not a seven-figure donor or a six-figure donor to the university, so I can’t make an impact. Yes you can, and I can make a huge impact.”
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Beamer does not want his South Carolina program to carry a reputation as one that stacks talent by being the highest bidder in a NIL war.
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It’s a necessary part of competing in recruiting, but Beamer is aware of the challenges it can cause in a locker room or even on the field. He is in favor of athletes taking advantage of NIL, but first and foremost wants players who want to compete.
“I understand that there’s a monetary part of it. I get it. But when we’re playing the University of Georgia, we’re playing Clemson or whoever and it’s fourth and one in the fourth quarter and we’ve to got to have it, I want the guy that came to South Carolina for the right reasons, and not because he got the best NIL deal from us,” Beamer explained.
Once you land those players, the transfer portal combined with the lure of big NIL deals is a very real factor.
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Beamer would like to be able to keep those impactful players in his program long-term. He pointed to players like Luke Doty and Tonka Hemingway as examples.
“The more we can recruit guys like that and win with those people, the better off we’re going to be,” he said. “To me, the teams that have the most success nowadays in college athletics are the ones that are led by the right people, they’re veteran teams, they’re got a bunch of leaders on it as well, and they come together as a team.”
