Why the timing of South Carolina’s hire is going to be strange no matter how it falls
There’s a sort of uncomfortable tradition that has become a part of college football.
A new coach hire comes together in the days leading up to conference championship weekend. A hire either appears imminent or is already reported by the time a coach has finished his title game, leading to an awkward postgame news conference. A reporter has to ask. A coach fends off the question, saying it’s just about the players.
Within 24 hours, the new school shares graphic on social media to announce the hire. A day or two later, the coach is wearing a new logo and is hitting the road to recruit.
And the way South Carolina’s coaching search ends will be a twist on that.
The coming weeks will bring something that probably isn’t unprecedented in college football, but is certainly a rarity.
USC has its opening after firing Will Muschamp. In the modern game, December’s early signing period for recruiting has made things tricky for every new coach, as the gap between hiring and inking the first batch of players is only a few weeks — as compared with two months with the old system.
But this is the year of COVID. Everything has been pushed back. It’s moved things so far back that the most talked about South Carolina candidate — Shane Beamer, Billy Napier and Jamey Chadwell — will likely still be preparing for title games after the Dec. 16 signing day.
Rick Henry of WIS-TV tweeted that the school’s goal is getting someone in place by Dec. 12. That’s a week before Napier’s Louisiana team will play for a Sun Belt title game, very likely against Chadwell’s Coastal Carolina squad. (This opens the chance someone gets hired and then loses to another candidate.) Beamer probably has more flexibility, as he his not a head coach or coordinator at Oklahoma. But there’s a good chance he’d have to turn some attention to South Carolina with two Sooners games to go.
The sport’s history is long enough that this has probably happened before, but it’s an incredible rarity.
And the recruiting dynamics are going to be deeply strange.
The top four members of South Carolina’s already low-rated class have broken their commitments to the Gamecocks. Even if a new coach is in by the 12th, there will be an incredible scramble to get a sense of players and sign who the team can get and wants. They’ll have to assemble in February what they can from the smaller group that doesn’t sign in December, and turn attention toward the transfer portal, which will take on added importance.
At the moment, USC has 10 commits, and that number can only really go down until a new coach comes aboard.
So it’s going to be a scramble. This aspect will be more strange if the hire is a sitting head coach, either leaving a team chasing a title or splitting time on the way out (not to mention the reaction if Chadwell or Napier is hired and loses to the other coach in the Sun Belt title game).
But the Gamecocks find themselves making a change in an unusual year that will put an unusual twist on already uncomfortable traditions.
