The advantages, challenges that come with the South Carolina football job
All college football jobs have quirks. Contours are built around resources, support, boosters, expectations.
South Carolina’s job might have more quirks than most.
There’s a reality new Gamecocks coach Shane Beamer is stepping into, a world where he’s built a level of behind-the-scenes support and now has to make good on his opportunity.
Five living men have been given chances to sit in that big chair and build a program over a longer haul. One, Will Muschamp, just got fired, and has not spoken publicly in any way about the situation. The State reached out to the others to get a sense of the advantages of the job and what some of the unique challenges are.
Through a University of South Florida spokesman, Brad Scott (1994-1998) politely declined the interview request. The timing could not be worked out to get Lou Holtz (1999-2004) on the phone (he is recently recovered from COVID and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom).
But The State did speak to Steve Spurrier (2005-2015) and Sparky Woods (1989-1993). Spurrier did not go into much detail, simply saying: “Same as everywhere. Same challenges as everywhere. South Carolina is a wonderful job.”
But Woods, who came in after the death of Joe Morrison, gave a bit more color and detail. His was an era where the facilities were different (he remembered getting the land for the practice fields from a dairy) and the sport’s landscape didn’t look the same. The school had not yet joined the SEC (it would by the end of his his tenure) and he inherited a team that had NCAA issues.
And he laid out some of the areas that help and challenges to overcome with this particular job:
The advantages
▪ “It’s an SEC school.”
▪ “The high school football in very important in South Carolina. The high school coaches do a great job. For such a small state, there’s a lot of good players.”
▪ “The university is outstanding, and they’re committed to football. ... It’s a fun place to play football and a fun place to live. Columbia is a great town.”
▪ “They show up. They support their team and the people of South Carolina are great.”
The hurdles
▪ “You play in the Southeastern Conference, so the teams you play against are tough.”
▪ “Clemson is roaring. They’re great and they’re in your state, so you share the in-state recruitment with them.”
▪ “Not much east of you because you have the Atlantic ocean, so you have to go north, south, west and you’re surrounded by states like North Carolina and Georgia, Florida, which are good football places as well.”
▪ “They haven’t developed the tradition that a lot of other schools enjoy. I think when I was there, we had only been to six bowl games and at that time and hadn’t won one. We turned down two the first two years I was there, which was not very smart, probably.”
▪ “I think that sometimes being in the capital, you’re kind of the talk of the town and sometimes the talk is good. Sometimes it’s not. Everybody wants to help a little bit. So it makes it a little harder where if you’re in a place where you’re not in the capital, you can close in your ranks a little bit better, a little bit.”
And he summed it all up like this.
“It should be an attractive place for anybody who wants to coach football. What you want is the ballplayers around you, a school that supports it, people that support it. They have all that. So I think it’s a lot more positives than negatives.”
It’s now Beamer’s ship to pilot. Some things have surely changed from those previous tenures, but many are built into the fabric of the position.
