Shane Beamer Reveals Key to Success at South Carolina
Since Shane Beamer was hired as the South Carolina Gamecocks head football coach before the 2021 college football season, the process and development of the program have been slow and steady.
Over the last four seasons, the Gamecocks have a 29-22 record, 15-17 in SEC play. In 2024, South Carolina football enjoyed its best season since 2017, compiling a 9-4 record and recording six straight wins to close the regular season. With that strong finish, South Carolina was in the conversation to make the College Football Playoff tournament, although Alabama and Miami were the first teams out.
Given the program’s success this year, Beamer knew South Carolina needed to retain the team’s best players like LaNorris Sellers and Dylan Stewart to build on its success toward the future, as he explained in an interview with On3’s Pete Nakos.
“(Sellers and Stewart) didn’t need to go anywhere else to continue to accomplish what they wanted to accomplish here,” Beamer said. “They realized that everything we said in the recruiting process, we were going to do and be. That’s who we are. So it was a pretty simple process. We knew early in the season that the key for us was going to be to retain our roster. So we got to work on the particulars of that.”
Beamer also explained that multiple teams attempted to talk to Sellers about entering the portal, which is considered tampering, a violation of NCAA rules.
“(Tampering is) year-round, just because so many of the third parties are involved and people are reaching out to players all over the country,” added Beamer. “They know who we are, but certainly, that’s just prevalent — you know it’s going on. You realize that someone’s always in either our players’ ears or someone who is close to their ears.”
In On3’s way-too-early top 25 college football rankings released on January 22, Beamer and South Carolina were slotted at No. 8.
