With 'College GameDay' coming, Beamer believes Saturday vs. LSU can be 'huge' for recruiting
Even before the season started, South Carolina’s Week 3 matchup at home against LSU was a big game. But after everything that has transpired in the last 24 hours, the magnitude of this matchup has ratcheted up quite a bit.
Shortly after the Gamecocks’ 31-6 win over Kentucky on Saturday, ESPN’s “College GameDay” announced it will be heading to Columbia next Saturday. Immediately after the show concludes, South Carolina will take on the Tigers at noon on ABC.
This will be the first time in 10 years that GameDay is back at South Carolina. Because of this, there will be a lot more eyeballs on the team. And it’s something head coach Shane Beamer is looking forward to, especially from a recruiting standpoint.
“It’ll be huge,” Beamer said during his Sunday teleconference. “Certainly, we had a lot of recruits that were already planning on coming to this game before we did what we did yesterday.”
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Even before GameDay’s decision came out, Beamer thought more attention would be on his team heading into the Kentucky game. While the TV ratings haven’t come out yet, he thought being the only SEC game on would result in more people wanting to watch in the afternoon window.
“No disrespect to Notre Dame-Northern Illinois or Iowa-Iowa State, but I think those were really the only other two games on yesterday, because I think ESPN had the U.S. Open tennis going on yesterday,” Beamer said. “So there wasn’t a lot of options at 3:30 to watch college football yesterday. So there were a lot of eyes on us.”
In the hours following the team’s 25-point win, Beamer said interest quickly went up from recruits wanting to attend next Saturday’s home game. This came as a result of not only being on national television but also playing very well.
“There was already a lot of interest from recruits that wanted to come to this game on Saturday,” he said. “And certainly after yesterday, there’s a lot more that we’ve heard from that want to be here on Saturday. … So it will be great from a recruiting standpoint.”
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For 2025, South Carolina’s recruiting class ratings have slipped. The Gamecocks dropped 11 spots in the national rankings and now sit at No. 30 overall. In the SEC, they have the third-lowest recruiting class for next year.
With that said, this will be an opportunity to make potentially big strides in recruitment. Saturday will be a chance for not just recruits, but a national audience to see South Carolina on center stage. Beamer noted they also need to play well in the game itself against LSU. But he believes this will not be the last time the iconic show is back in Columbia.
“It will be a great showcase for our program, for our university, for the city of Columbia, for our fanbase,” Beamer said. “The way I look at it, this will hopefully be the first of many, many times that GameDay is here as long as I’m the head coach here at South Carolina.”
