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PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY BEECHER FAMILY/
Tommy Beecher with his parents, Scott and Pam.
GoGamecocks.com
Morris: Bringing up Beecher
He was Spurrier's first quarterback on scholarship at USC. Now he's the new
Tommy Beecher
BRETTFLASHNICK.COM/SPECIAL TO THE STATE
Posted on 08.24.08
CONCORD, N.C.
If ever there was a 30-minute period that defined a person’s character, it was a segment of Tommy Beecher’s life on the night of Dec. 1, 2004. In the waning moments of Concord High School’s playoff victory against Asheville, Beecher proved that patience, perseverance and resolve pay off.
He has been proving it ever since.
So let’s relive those wild, final minutes and hope that by game’s end you will understand better the inner workings of Tommy Beecher, South Carolina’s starting quarterback when the college football season kicks off Thursday evening.
First, you should know Beecher’s Concord team trailed Asheville 20-0, and the Spiders’ dream of winning a state championship for the first time in 75 years was all but gone. Seconds earlier, the play-by-play announcer on Concord’s cable network telecast proclaimed “(Asheville) looks like they’re headed to the state championship game.”
With Concord taking possession of the ball at its 35-yard line and 5:34 remaining, Beecher approaches his coach, E.Z. Smith, with not an ounce of fear.
“Give me three plays, coach. They can’t stop us.”
“OK, Tommy, run 500, 506 and 508.”
The three dropback pass plays cover the length of the field, the final one going for 33 yards.
Three plays, 65 yards, 29 seconds.
Asheville 20, Concord 7.
As E.Z. Smith sat in the Concord High football field house on a recent afternoon, he watched videotape of that game’s final minutes and again shook his head in disbelief. Four years later, he still finds it difficult to comprehend that college coaches did not see what he saw in his star quarterback.
“How can you let a kid like that get out of the state of North Carolina?” Smith said. “Well, they’d say he didn’t fit their system, or they weren’t sure about the zone read (offense) we run.”
Smith paused, then recalled his response to every coach who offered yet another reason for not recruiting Beecher.
“Do you want to win?” Smith asked coaches. “Well, that’s what the kid does. He wins.”
Smith admitted it was a disheartening time, not only for Beecher, who believed he could play at any of North Carolina’s Big Four schools, but also for himself. Smith’s ability to evaluate and project talent came into question.
Smith saw the same qualities in Beecher that he saw in former Concord players Jimmy Hitchcock and Jay Graham, both of whom played in the NFL after college stops at North Carolina and Tennessee, respectively. Smith believed he knew something about talent. He was a three-year starting tackle at South Carolina from 1973-75. He eventually returned to his high school alma mater as coach, and he was won two state championships and compiled a 251-92-1 record in 28 seasons.
Yet by late November of Beecher’s senior season, one school had shown enough interest in him to offer a scholarship: Richmond, a small-college power but still a Division I-AA school.
Beecher considered walking on at North Carolina. Wake Forest was not interested. N.C. State was not an option. Worst of all, lowly Duke said it could not envision Beecher leading the Blue Devils out of the ACC’s basement.
Beecher’s parents, Pam and Scott, say their oldest son was born to go to Duke. Pam’s father, Tee Moorman, was an All-American end there in 1960. Both her brothers, Tee and Tommy Moorman, played there.
Pam also attended the prestigious school for three semesters in the early 1980s. Even after she transferred to Wheaton (Ill.) College and then returned to Concord to raise a family, Pam believed her three sons and one daughter could get the best education in North Carolina by attending Duke.
While at Duke, Pam became close friends with Mary Dinkins, a longtime Duke football administrative assistant. Pam and Dinkins spent many afternoons palling around the football practice field, and as a result they developed a friendship with the coaches, most notably a young assistant named Steve Spurrier.
Dinkins, now the director of Duke’s Varsity Club, has maintained a longtime friendship in Durham with Pam’s father.
In addition to playing varsity tennis at Wheaton, Pam laid the foundation for living a faith-based life. She sprinkles her conversations with stories about how God has acted on her life and those of her family. She believes it was divine intervention that Spurrier was hired as South Carolina’s football coach on Nov. 23, 2004.
His hiring set Pam’s wheels in motion. She called Dinkins, who in turn called Spurrier to tell him about a quarterback in Concord, the nephew of a former lineman of his at Duke. Pam then called Smith to see if he had any connections with USC.
Turns out, Smith knew Spurrier from clinics when Spurrier was Florida’s coach. Smith was so enamored with Spurrier and his Florida teams, the Concord offense still uses the basic principles of Florida’s offense from 1993.
Smith called Spurrier, who suggested Smith send a videotape of Beecher’s highlights. Smith’s two-hour video included everything: ball fakes, passes off his back foot, out patterns, fade patterns, post patterns, throws when getting hit, bootleg plays, scrambles and even a run from a punt formation.
Mostly, the videotape showed plays from the 2004 season. Included was the first play of the season opener, when Beecher threw a perfect strike down the left sideline that hit the receiver in stride for an 80-yard touchdown. There also was the sectional championship game against Winston-Salem Carver, when Concord trailed 22-19 with 11.9 seconds remaining and faced a fourth-and-4 from the Carver 27.
Before that final play, Smith called Beecher to the sideline and told him about Super Bowl VI, when Dallas quarterback Roger Staubach dropped back to pass, pump-faked to his left and hit his receiver in the right corner of the end zone.
“Come on, Tommy, fake it to the left, throw it to the right and let’s go home,” Smith recalled telling his quarterback. They went home happy.
Spurrier watched five minutes of the videotape. He liked what he saw.
“I thought he had a chance,” Spurrier said. “He could move around. His form we’ve worked on a little bit. But, like I told him, I’ve never had a quarterback come in that we didn’t have to tinker a little bit with their throwing motion or their fundamentals of throwing.”
Spurrier was impressed enough to eventually offer a scholarship.
Trailing 20-7 with 3:14 remaining, Concord gains possession of the ball at its 24-yard line.
After an incomplete pass, Beecher throws the ball 60 yards in the air for what ends up as a 56-yard completion. Following a completion and an 11-yard scramble, Concord faces first-and-goal at the Asheville 2.
Out of the shotgun, Beecher looks over the defense and sees a better option for the pass play that has been sent from the sideline. He motions to two receivers on the far left, an action that causes Asheville’s middle linebacker to move far to the outside.
Beecher then audibles to an inside handoff, and his running back walks into the end zone via the area vacated by the linebacker.
“He’s so smart,” Smith says later, “so smart.”
Six plays, 76 yards, one minute and three seconds.
Asheville 20, Concord 14.
The Beechers reside in a cul-de-sac in the tony Woodcreek neighborhood of Concord, a few football fields from Concord High. Pam and Scott built the house when they moved back to Pam’s hometown in 1992.
Steve Spurrier’s visit to the home in December of 2004 was quite the topic of conversation among neighbors. It certainly was a big deal to Tommy and his brothers, Matt, now 19 and a tight end at Appalachian State, and B.J., now 13 and an eighth-grader. Katie, a 16-year-old junior on the Concord High volleyball team, was intrigued.
Pam met Spurrier and his son Steve Jr. at the Concord airport and immediately began her interrogation. She did not fret much over the lasagna dinner she prepared. Her concern was with the academic opportunities available to her son at USC.
“All she probably heard about the University of South Carolina wasn’t all that super,” Spurrier said.
A couple of days after the Spurriers returned to Columbia, they received a letter of apology from Pam for being so frank during their visit. She wrote that because of their previous acquaintance, she believed speaking boldly about academics was OK.
Pam longed for her son to attend Duke, but that was not in the cards. She was satisfied Richmond could offer him a quality education. She wanted to make certain Spurrier and the USC coaching staff understood that if Tommy attended USC, his top priority was school work.
Tommy earned a 4.3 grade-point average in advanced classes at Concord High and scored 1270 on his SAT. His father, Scott, is a physical therapist, and Tommy liked the idea of being a pediatrician.
So Tommy liked the idea of entering USC’s pre-med program. Before enrolling in school, though, Tommy and his mother took the two-hour drive to Columbia and sat in on an honors calculus II course taught by professor Bob Murphy. His mother returned to Concord satisfied.
Tommy quickly learned at USC that mathematics was his strong suit. Then a math professor pulled him aside one day during his freshman year. The professor told of how an insurance company representative had just left the professor’s office without finding an actuary mathematician to fill a job vacancy. The starting salary, Tommy learned, was $80,000.
Tommy quickly changed his major to mathematics with an emphasis on actuarial mathematics and statistics.
“Tommy was probably the smartest undergraduate student that I had,” said George Androulakis, a mathematics professor for eight years at USC. “During each of my lectures, I like to make every student participate, so some of the questions are designed to challenge the best students in the class.
“During the classes that Tommy took with me, he could always answer immediately the most challenging questions that I was asking. I believe that Tommy likes to be challenged with difficult questions, and he thrives in a challenging classroom.”
As a redshirt freshman in the spring of 2006, Beecher won the Harold White GPA Award among USC offensive players. The next two springs, he won the Andrew Sorensen Scholar Athlete Award for having the team’s highest GPA. He currently is the recipient of the Wyman L. Williams Scholarship, awarded to an undergraduate mathematics major at USC. His GPAs have held steady the past three years at 3.9, 3.82 and 3.79.
Spurrier often boasts that Beecher is “the smartest guy on our team.” Whether that translates to the football field is not a given, though, according to Spurrier.
“I’m hoping Tommy is going to be a smart guy both places,” Spurrier said. “Some quarterbacks have tremendous common sense, which is really what it takes. Common sense and the ability to think and react quickly.”
Asheville leads 20-14 when Concord gains possession at its 17-yard line with 50.2 seconds remaining and no timeouts.
Consecutive check-off passes gain 21 yards, and an incomplete pass that follows leaves Concord with a third-and-3 at its 38 with 31 seconds left.
Beecher throws a bullet of a pass that covers most of the 56 yards gained, and he quickly spikes the ball at the 6-yard line with 13 seconds left.
Beecher again checks off at the line of scrimmage, hits his receiver with a quick slant, and he is into the end zone.
Six plays, 83 yards, 37 seconds.
Concord 21, Asheville 20.
The rumor around Concord was that Spurrier would offer Beecher a scholarship only if he led Concord to the North Carolina state 3A championship in December of 2004. Spurrier said he never would make such a proclamation, but he admitted to being in search of winning football players when he arrived at USC.
“We always would like to have players who are accustomed to winning, certainly,” Spurrier said. “I may have said it’s good to have players who are used to winning championships on your team.”
Regardless, when Beecher returned from Winston-Salem following Concord’s victory against Wilson Hunt for the state title, a voice message from Spurrier was waiting on the telephone. Spurrier offered a scholarship.
Still, Pam and Scott had questions. Their son had built a famous relationship with Smith at Concord, and they wanted to know if the same kind could be established with Spurrier at USC.
Pam had been warned by Smith and others that Spurrier can be hard on quarterbacks. Pam harked back to her days at Duke when she knew Spurrier to be a “nice guy.” She knew of Spurrier’s clashes with Duke quarterback Ben Bennett in 1980 and 1981, but she believed “Tommy Beecher’s nothing like Ben Bennett.”
During the recruiting visit, Tommy’s father asked Spurrier, “What do you expect from your quarterbacks?”
Spurrier, according to Scott, replied, “Perfection. I expect perfection. I don’t always get it, but I expect it.”
Following Tommy’s freshman year, one in which he was redshirted, he was prepared to transfer. A year on the sideline had not helped him climb Spurrier’s depth chart, and three and sometimes four quarterbacks remained ahead of him. Learning to play under a different style of coach had taken its toll.
“Coach Smith became one of my best friends when I was at Concord,” Beecher said. “We could talk about anything. He became like my second dad. The way the coaches treat you in college is obviously a little different. It was a different experience for me.”
At Concord, while the rest of the team ate steak for its pregame meal, Beecher’s coach allowed the quarterback’s mom to bring a special dinner. Granted, while the Chick-fil-A meal was all about superstition, it showed Beecher was granted special privileges by his coach.
Beecher set up a meeting with Spurrier, who asked the quarterback to reconsider his plan to transfer. Beecher turned to his deep-seeded faith in God to make a decision. Understand, this is a 21-year-old who has memorized the letter of Paul to the Philippians, can recite the Sermon on the Mount from the book of Matthew and is working on three chapters of Proverbs.
Beecher has made two mission trips to Haiti, experiences that made him more appreciative of what he and his family have. In the years since, Beecher has reflected on those trips in times of trouble or indecision.
His mother has reminded him often during his stay at USC to remain patient, to persevere. She repeats the story of Moses, who wandered in the desert for 40 years in search of the Promised Land.
Three years of waiting his turn as quarterback at USC was no time at all.
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