Hall of Famer Frank Beamer will be around South Carolina ‘a lot’, Shane Beamer says
There’s no denying South Carolina football’s new head coach, Shane Beamer, brings a famous last name to Columbia. His father, Frank Beamer, is a Hall of Fame coach himself, having built Virginia Tech into a successful program over the course of nearly 40 seasons.
But Shane is not just bringing the name of Beamer to the Gamecocks — he’ll be bringing the legend himself to help out around the program.
In his introductory press conference Monday, Shane Beamer said during the course of a five-and-a-half-hour interview with athletics director Ray Tanner, assistant AD Chance Miller and President Bob Caslen that he pledged that should he get the job, his father would be around and involved in the program — even though he hadn’t actually discussed that with Frank.
“Shortly after that interview ... I called my dad and told him how it went,” Shane said. “I said, ‘I’m sorry, I may have spoke for you and promised something that I can’t go back out of.’ But, no, he’s all for it.”
Indeed, Shane Beamer said he is “pretty confident you’ll be seeing him a lot around this program,” joking that at the very least, he’ll be drawn to Columbia by his grandchildren and the area’s golf courses.
What exact role Frank will take, Shane didn’t say exactly. But he did note that he still regularly calls his 74-year-old father for football advice, be it schematic or leadership-based. And he added that at his most recent job as assistant head coach at Oklahoma, Frank would often stop by games, practices and meetings, something head coach Lincoln Riley was fine with.
Experienced head coaches hanging around programs in roles to offer advice and guidance are nothing new. Former South Carolina coach Sparky Woods serves as a senior advisor at UNC for Mack Brown, while former Mercer coach Bobby Lamb helps out at Louisiana under Billy Napier as a senior analyst.
Frank Beamer was famous at Virginia Tech for playing “Beamer Ball,” a style of play defined by opportunistic special teams and aggressive offense and defense. That moniker might not follow Shane to South Carolina, he said, but he did pledge that its spirit will come with him and his father.
“There’s certainly going to be aspects of Beamer Ball. I think that’s probably copyrighted up there in Blacksburg. But when you talk about Beamer Ball, you talk about the attacking, you talk about the ability to score on offense, defense and special teams,” Shane Beamer said. “(That’s) what I think about when somebody says Beamer Ball. So we may not use the term Beamer Ball exactly, but playing that way and having that aspect as a part of our program is certainly something we’re going to be about.”
This story was originally published December 7, 2020 at 3:24 PM.
