Why Tommy Beecher won’t let one bad game define him

Tommy Beecher makes a point of saying this: He’s not bitter.

There was a time he probably was, one where the idea of being a football player defined him in a big way. But his college career ended in 2009, and he’s got a life defined by so much more than a game with an oblong ball.

This week, the South Carolina football team he once played for will face off against the North Carolina State football program he faced in his only collegiate start. It’ll be in Charlotte, the town where he now lives. It’s a little quirky happenstance that sounds a lot like his brief moment of notoriety.

He hasn’t thought of that confluence of events, and looks back with a sense of appreciation he didn’t have then, along with a tinge of sadness things didn’t go a little better.

“Kind of like a missed opportunity,” Beecher said. “But so many lessons learned. So many of the things I learned while I was at South Carolina, dealing with adversity. They’ve developed me as a man.

“I try not to care as much about what people think as I did back then. ... It took several years for me to get over that, but now I’m just thankful for the time that I spent there.”

South Carolina fans will remember Beecher solely through the lens of being a football player and almost as an odd footnote. He was Steve Spurrier’s first quarterback commitment in Columbia, an extremely intelligent kid from the Charlotte area who developed and worked his way into a starting spot in the spring and summer of 2008.

What followed was a peculiar sort of football game.

South Carolina knocked off the Wolfpack 34-0 to open the season, starting slow and pulling away late while allowing a paltry 138 yards. But Beecher struggled mightily.

He completed 12-of-22 passes for 105 yards, getting sacked five times and throwing four interceptions (that last stat seems to stick with people). He gave way to Chris Smelley, who came in during the fourth quarter to put the game out of reach.

Adding to the game’s curiosities, N.C. State started a future Super Bowl champion at quarterback, and he too saw another passer finish out the game after a concussion.

“I’m 1-0 against Russell Wilson,” Beecher said. “Although I had very little to do with the outcome.”

And after that game, Beecher hardly played again. He saw the field late against UAB, and at season’s end was ready to leave football and go into the workforce.

“I’ve got to be honest, I didn’t reach any of the goals I set for myself athletically at South Carolina,” Beecher said. “I had a really good time and met some great people. But there was a while there, after I had left, that I wanted to erase many of the memories I had on the football field there. I don’t think about it often.”

Then the chance to play football at Liberty came up, pairing a quarterback who didn’t want his career to end in that way and a team that could use a quarterback. Beecher was torn, but people close to him encouraged him to try again.

He beat out an athletic redshirt sophomore, Mike Brown, who went on to spend a few years with the Jacksonville Jaguars. Beecher threw for 1,700 yards at the helm of the top scoring team in the country and helped lead the Flames to an 8-3 record, conference co-championship and FCS Playoffs.

Beecher had planned to return to Columbia and Colonial Life, where he’d interned while earning his USC degree in actuarial mathematics. But a Liberty teammate, Greg Schuster, encouraged Beecher to interview with his father’s small company in Charlotte.

Beecher is still with that company, the Remi Group, now as a director of operations.

He admits the final season at USC was far from easy. Football players always have lofty aspirations, and no one wants to be the player who had one infamous game.

“That was four years of adversity and it’s shaped me into the man that I am today,” Beecher said. “I find joy and hope and happiness in so many things outside of football that I was looking for in football when I was in school.”

Looking back, he said he never truly carried over the confidence he had as a high school player, where he always felt he was the best player on the field and could always swing the game. He never felt that at USC.

“I think that as soon as you lose confidence as a quarterback, things start to quicken up in the game,” Beecher said. “The game doesn’t slow down. It actually gets faster, and it’s harder to make good decisions.”

“I think I had all the physical ability while I was at South Carolina. I worked really hard to develop the physical ability. I just couldn’t get it right between the ears.”

But Beecher didn’t leave South Carolina fully behind.

He stayed in touch with teammates. He still is in contact with the likes of Brett Nichols, Ryan Succop, Taylor Rank, Smelley and Stephen Garcia. Beecher said he hasn’t talked to Spurrier since his time as a player, but he doesn’t put that on his former coach.

“Four years ago, if you had asked me that question, I might have some animosity,” Beecher said. “But I look back on that time, and wish that I had been a little bit different more than he had been different. He’s an unbelievable coach, I learned so much from him. So much, not only on the football field, but in life in general.

“But as a 20, 21-year old guy, I couldn’t handle it. I didn’t have the confidence I needed in myself.”

He said he’s been down to Columbia a few times, driven through campus on the way to Charleston. He hasn’t gone to Williams-Brice since his time as a player, but that’s not because he’s intentionally staying away.

“One day, I’d like to do that,” Beecher said. “It hasn’t worked out so far.”

The college student who once saw himself more as a player than anything else, said his company became his new team. He was hired on with a small group and now works with more than 120 people

He said he’s defined by other things, job, faith, family.

“Now looking back, I’m so much more than a football player,” Beecher said. “I’m a person of faith, first and foremost, and had my identity been in that first and foremost and had I been playing for an audience of one, I think my confidence would have been a lot different.”

Beecher got married a few months ago and is looking forward to starting a family of his own. He turned his time at South Carolina into a successful career, and now looks back on those days with the sort of maturity and perspective one can forgive someone in their early 20s for not possessing.

It’s South Carolina-N.C. State game week again, being played right where he lives. In 2008, he was preparing for what he probably thought was one of the biggest moments of his life, and now looks like a different kind of moment in so many ways.

South Carolina and the ups and downs made him who he is, far beyond one afternoon or season.

“I wouldn’t trade those four years in for anything,” Beecher said.

This story was originally published August 30, 2017 at 2:43 PM with the headline "Why Tommy Beecher won’t let one bad game define him."