Welcome home: Why South Carolina is more than a job to Shane Beamer
The small black-and-white jet touches down in Columbia and rolls to a stop. The door opens, and 7-year-old Hunter Beamer is the first person to climb out.
His mother, Emily Beamer, exits closely behind him, descending the plane’s stairs while holding one of her son’s garnet-colored South Carolina footballs.
Next come Sutton and Olivia, the two Beamer daughters. Then, finally, out steps the man for whom the plane was sent — the next head coach of the South Carolina football team.
“Great to be back in Columbia,” Shane Beamer tweeted later that day, on Dec. 20. “... With the family this time!!”
Attached to the tweet is a photo of the five Beamers huddled together, posing in front of the Gamecocks logo on the plane’s tail. Young Hunter is the star of the picture, standing at his father’s hip and beaming with unmistakable glee. The photographer probably didn’t need to tell him to smile.
Hunter is wearing a garnet quarter-zip sweatshirt and holding his Gamecocks football like a trophy. Hunter has three of those footballs. Ever since his father accepted the South Carolina job, he’s had one in his hands at all times.
Maybe no single person pushed harder for Shane to take the job than Hunter did. While the former Oklahoma assistant coach was waiting through the interview process, Hunter would text his dad every night on his way home from work, asking if he was close. And as soon as Shane would walk through the door, Hunter would play the iconic Gamecock anthem “Sandstorm” and wave a T-shirt over his head.
That kind of behavior isn’t new. Hunter might not be old enough to understand all the intricacies of college football, but he’s already shown flashes of the same passion his father has.
In early December, Shane was in his home office in Norman, Oklahoma, studying on his computer for the Sooners’ Dec. 5 game against Baylor. At the other end of the room, Hunter was watching video on an iPad. He had pulled up footage of last year’s Baylor game.
Emily snapped a picture and texted it to Shane’s mother, Cheryl Beamer.
“It’s precious,” Cheryl told The State. “I have a feeling Hunter’s going to be a coach, too.”
And Cheryl would know. As the wife of Hall of Fame college football coach Frank Beamer — the winningest coach in Virginia Tech history — she has seen the exact scenario play out before.
Shane was once just like Hunter, watching every move his father made and emulating it. When Frank would go on road trips, Shane would grab a copy of his father’s itinerary, put on a suit and tie and arrange the chairs in the Beamer kitchen to simulate a bus — and he’d make his sister, Casey, ride in one of the seats. After the family moved to Blacksburg, Shane would stand on his parents’ back deck, put on a Fisher-Price headset and call down football “plays” to his sister and friends on the grass below. He spent countless hours in the family garage, where he would practice holding a headphone wire — just so he could properly hold his dad’s wire as he walked up and down the Virginia Tech sideline on game day.
Shane didn’t have an iPad or YouTube or any of the technological luxuries his son has now. Instead, he’d write letters to football teams all over the country, asking them to please mail him one of their media guides.
“We actually had to buy him a filing cabinet for Christmas one year because he had so many magazines and newspapers and media guides,” Cheryl said, laughing. “He could tell you how many people the stadium would seat, who the trainer was. I mean, he was so detail-oriented even then.”
There was no talking Shane out of becoming a football coach — not that anyone would want to. Love for the sport runs deep in the Beamer DNA. Even Shane’s sister worked for the Carolina Panthers for a time.
Shane absorbed as much as he could from his father. He played for him at Virginia Tech. Coached with him, too. He still receives phone calls from Frank every Thursday during the college season to talk strategy and to wish him luck.
“I’m 43 years old,” Shane said, “and I’ve been the son of a head coach my entire life.”
Yet Shane was never content to ride his father’s coattails. Frank was Shane’s first teacher — and most important teacher — but even he would tell you that Shane is his own man. Frank has never put in a call for his son as he applied to coaching jobs, and Shane has never asked him to. Even during the South Carolina interview process, Shane and his parents didn’t talk, other than a text message from Cheryl and Frank that said: “No matter where you are, we love you and we’re proud of you.”
The Gamecocks didn’t just hire Frank Beamer’s son. They hired Hunter Beamer’s father. And Olivia’s and Sutton’s — both girls born in Columbia. They hired a man who spent four decades preparing for this exact moment, who studied under the tutelage of not only his father, but also Steve Spurrier, Slyvester Croom, Kirby Smart and Lincoln Riley. They hired someone who understands better than most that a football team is more than a collection of players.
Football is family.
Lesson 1: ‘You’ve got to care about your players, and they’ve got to know it’
DeVonte Holloman will never forget the moment Shane Beamer got angry. He remembers because it happened exactly one time.
It was Sept. 24, 2009 — the day South Carolina upset No. 4 Mississippi in Columbia. At that time, Beamer was coaching outside linebackers and cornerbacks on Spurrier’s staff, in addition to special teams and recruiting duties. Holloman, a star linebacker for the Gamecocks, remembers lining up in man coverage late in the game, with the Gamecocks just narrowly holding a lead.
One of Holloman’s teammates lined up face-to-face with dynamic Ole Miss running back Dexter McCluster — a second-round draft pick in 2010. The safety, whom Holloman didn’t name out of privacy, didn’t think he could cover McCluster. The safety panicked and called timeout. And when he got to the sidelines, he was greeted by a screaming Beamer.
“Beamer got on him pretty hard,” Holloman told The State. “I don’t know if it was really about calling the timeout or the fact that Beamer trusted him out there on the field and he didn’t trust himself. I don’t know which one it was, but that was the only time I’ve seen Beamer super-duper upset.
“And after you see somebody with a calm demeanor get like that, you’re like, ‘Man, I don’t want to piss him off.’ ”
Since Beamer’s hire, waves of former Gamecocks — recent greats like Marcus Lattimore, Alshon Jeffery and Stephon Gilmore, guys Beamer recruited — have expressed both private and public support for the former USC assistant. A common theme among the praise is an appreciation for Beamer’s coolness under pressure, his positive spirit and his genuine affection for his players.
As special teams coordinator, he was the only coach other than Spurrier to stand in front of the entire roster and address the team. Beamer was only 30 years old when he joined the USC staff in 2007, yet he commanded respect in the way he treated his players. Special teams roles aren’t glamorous. No five-star recruit signs with a team to return kicks. But Beamer found ways to engage even the hot-shot freshmen.
“As a player, it was the first time I was ever given visual coaching, like visually how to attack,” Holloman said. “He did little things, like having videos to hype players up or keep them interested. He just always made it interesting. And if you can make special teams be interesting, you’ve got to be a pretty good coach, man.”
That engagement went beyond special teams. It went beyond football. Holloman, who is now the head coach at South Pointe High, said Beamer invested in his players as people. He pulled them into his family. Holloman remembers constantly seeing Beamer’s wife and daughters around Williams-Brice Stadium. Emily knew Holloman’s name, background, who he was as a player — little details that didn’t mean much to Holloman then but mean the world to him now.
One of Frank Beamer’s most important lessons to his son was: “You’ve got to care about your players, and they’ve got to know it.” He stressed the importance of being genuine and respectful.
Cheryl remembers when Frank took both young Shane and Casey to a radio show while he was a head coach at Murray State in the early 1980s. Before he went on air, he sat both kids down and said: “Look, I just happen to be in a profession that’s in the public eye. I’m no better and no different than anybody else’s daddy.”
Said Shane about his father: “He was the exact same person when he coached in the national championship game and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as he was back in 1992, when he won two games and was almost fired. Success never changed him. The way that he treated people never changed. I saw that, and it’s real. Because people recognize authentic, and that’s what we’re going to be. ... I’ve got to be Shane Beamer.”
Shane Beamer doesn’t just recruit players for three or four years of football production. He recruits them for lifelong relationships. Once someone enters Beamer’s network, they stay there.
Greg Wright, a former South Carolina walk-on who both played under Beamer and coached alongside him as a graduate assistant, said the lessons he learned from Beamer still resonate with him to this day. He appreciated how Beamer worked to cultivate positivity, how he was almost always uplifting and never belittling. Now a head coach himself at Timberland High, Wright tries to treat his own players the same way.
Two years ago, while Wright was coaching at Swansea High, Beamer stopped by during a recruiting trip. Wright got chills when Beamer told him how proud he was of him, how he always loved the energy he brought to special teams.
“Everything that we’re looking in for a culture, that mentality, that vibe, that spirit — that’s what he’s about,” Wright told The State.
“So I’m sure that our kids feel it. Former alumni, they feel a part of it. Everybody in the building from the janitor on up, they’re gonna feel a part of it. That’s coach Shane Beamer.”
Lesson 2: ‘Somewhere in the middle is reality’
Before the 280 career wins, before the Hall of Fame induction, before Virginia Tech reached any sort of national prominence, Frank Beamer was almost fired.
In 1987, Beamer took over a program saddled with NCAA violations and scholarship sanctions. It was an uphill fight from the very beginning, and after the Hokies finished a mere 2-8-1 in his sixth season, rumors swirled that he could be on his way out.
But then-athletic director David Braine saw something in Beamer, the way he taught his players like a professor, the way he cared for them. Braine gave Beamer one more chance and was immediately rewarded. The Hokies won the Independence Bowl the very next year, and they never had another losing season up until Beamer’s 2015 retirement.
Shane was only 15 years old in 1992, but he was struck by the way his father maintained his composure even through all the public vitriol. He remembers a fan yelling, “Bye-bye, Beamer!” on the last day of that season, when the Hokies lost to Virginia.
Frank wasn’t one to become flustered. He learned early in his career how important it was to maintain an even keel — an almost Zen-like calmness in the face of adversity. Cheryl remembers one game during Frank’s first coaching stop at Radford High School in Virginia in the early 1970s. Frustrated with his team, Beamer whipped around in anger and accidentally hit the player standing behind him, knocking the wind out of him.
Embarrassed, Beamer vowed to keep his emotions in check from that day forward.
“I worked at it,” Frank Beamer said. “I saw early on, you just can’t be a guy that one day you’re very high and the next day you’re real low. Your kids, the players, they see that.
“And I think when they see calmness and steadiness, they feel confidence. ... I know for myself I worked at it and tried to be that guy. Not too high, not too low. I say, ‘Somewhere in the middle is reality.’ ”
That temperament is something Frank passed on to Shane. Cheryl said she’s never seen her son blow up. Holloman only saw it that one time.
Composure under pressure is a necessity for any head coach, but particularly for a coach in the Southeastern Conference, where the pressure couldn’t be higher and patience is limited at best. Shane said himself at his introductory news conference that his dad “never would’ve made it past a sixth year in today’s time.”
The expectations from the South Carolina administration are to win — and to win quickly.
“Coach Beamer and I were talking earlier this morning: We have expectations, and we’re gonna do things sooner than later,” USC athletic director Ray Tanner said on the day he introduced Beamer. “And I said to him, ‘I never allowed my coaches to talk about rebuilding. Let’s talk about reloading. I want to win now.’ ”
That’s easier said than done. Just like Frank’s 1992 Virginia Tech team, Shane will inherit a group that went 2-8 this season. And though Shane won’t have to deal with scholarship sanctions like his father did, the current roster isn’t exactly stocked with talent.
One of the team’s strengths under the defensive-minded Will Muschamp was its secondary, yet six defensive backs, including star Jaycee Horn and up-and-comer John Dixon, won’t be with the team next year. Neither will wide receiver Shi Smith, the team’s lone dependable target in the passing game. Even quarterback is a giant question mark after freshman Luke Doty took over for Collin Hill late in the season.
It didn’t help that Beamer had roughly 10 days between his hiring and the start of early signing period to cobble together a recruiting class. The team announced just eight signees on National Signing Day, a class that is expected to grow over the coming weeks.
The USC administration and Gamecocks fans clearly hope for immediate success. Critics point to Beamer’s lack of head-coaching experience and expect immediate failure.
Perhaps the reality will end up being somewhere in the middle.
“I know it’s not gonna be easy,” Holloman said. “What I hope South Carolina fans don’t do is what we normally do — get impatient and start calling for the next coach after a season or two. Just like Muschamp, I think it’s gonna take time. We’ve got to give him a chance.”
Beamer is 0-0 as a head coach. He’s never been an offensive or defensive coordinator. Who he surrounds himself with on his coaching staff will likely be paramount.
But that’s not to say that Beamer lacks experience. He has served on college football coaching staffs for 21 years, learning under accomplished head coaches like his father, Spurrier, Croom, Smart and Riley. He’s coached both defensive players and offensive players, most recently assisting Riley with the Sooners’ explosive air-raid offense.
Beamer said he aims to bring that kind of explosiveness to the Gamecocks. Much like his father’s famous “Beamerball” mindset, he wants USC to be able to score points at any time, from any area of the field, in all three phases of the game
And South Carolina has already seen what Beamer can accomplish on the recruiting trail. While with the Gamecocks from 2007-10, he helped reel in beloved Gamecocks like Jadeveon Clowney, Jeffery, Gilmore and Holloman. He found a way to energize in-state recruits, to make them want to wear “Carolina” on their chests.
A decade later, Beamer still has those players energized; and there’s seemingly been a resurgence in Gamecock pride. Gilmore, now a star corner with the New England Patriots, wore a South Carolina shirt while speaking with reporters days after Beamer was hired.
“Everybody’s happy with the hire,” said Holloman, a close friend of Gilmore’s. “To have somebody that understands what it’s like to be in South Carolina, what it means to the fans, what it means to the players, the mentality of the players, the mentality of the state, it is different, and I think the alumni players understand that.
“That part was missing for a couple of years. Not to say anything bad about Muschamp and his staff, but as alumni, we kind of felt like outsiders in our own home. And that was kind of the part that rubbed us the wrong way — if there was one. But we believe in Beamer and the things that he did for us, the impact that he’s had on our lives, and we know it’s gonna be good for the kids now.”
Lesson 3: ‘Take care of the little things, and big things will follow’
Tears brimmed in Shane Beamer’s eyes as he recalled the late-night Saturday phone call.
Hours after the Sooners defeated Baylor — the game Hunter “helped” him study for — Beamer received a call from Tanner. His nerves escalated second by second as Tanner opened the conversation with small talk. Then, finally, Tanner asked Beamer the question he’d been dying to hear:
Are you ready to do this?
“To hear him say that was better than I could ever have imagined,” Beamer said a day later, at his introductory press conference. “To walk out of that room and see the reaction of my wife and our kids when I shook my head, ‘Yes,’ and told them that it was real and happening — I’ll never forget it. That was a special, special moment that I’ve been dreaming about for a long, long time.”
In that initial press conference, Beamer said that it had been his dream to be the head coach at South Carolina, that when he left the program after 2010 the hope was that he’d gain enough experience to be able to someday come back. To a casual fan, those words might sound cliche, just a new coach pandering to his fan base.
But there is truth to them. The Gamecocks have been on Shane’s radar since he was a young boy. Shane was born in Charleston, where Frank was an assistant under Bobby Ross at The Citadel. He remembers how often his father would talk about wanting to be the South Carolina head coach one day, how he viewed the position as a “final job” in a coach’s career. A place to work up to.
Shane attended his first game at Williams-Brice Stadium when Frank brought his Hokies there, and Shane said he remembers being blown away by the size of the stadium and the electricity in the crowd. He still has a vivid memory of the late USC athletic director Mike McGee visiting the Beamer household in Blacksburg and interviewing Frank for the Gamecocks’ head-coaching job in their kitchen.
When Shane and Emily moved to Columbia in 2007, it felt like the perfect fit. Both Olivia and Sutton were born there. The community was welcoming. Even though Beamer coached in Columbia 10 years ago, the relationships he built remain intact, Tanner said.
“They just fell in love with the whole area,” Cheryl told The State. “They loved the people. They loved all the restaurants. And they always just thought they had everything they needed to be successful (at South Carolina). They had the facilities. The fan base was loyal. Win, lose or draw, they are gonna be there for you.”
There is skepticism that Beamer can win at South Carolina, that the Gamecocks can compete with the football powerhouses that rule the SEC. Beamer doesn’t buy it.
“As far as obstacles, I don’t look at it that way,” he said. “I just see great opportunities and great things in front of me.”
Wright, the coach at Timberland High, tuned into Beamer’s press conference and wrote down that exact quote about “obstacles” and “opportunities.” He joked that he added it to his “Rolodex,” so he can use it with his own players. The line is classic Shane Beamer, a man known for his glass-half-full perspective.
He learned at a young age about the importance of gratitude, and that’s something he carries with him to this day.
“I told somebody that my legacy when I die would be that Shane writes thank-you notes to people,” Cheryl said, laughing. “He’s always been really good about that.”
Frank always told Shane to “take care of the little things, and the big things will follow.” Ironically, those “little things” are what Shane’s players and peers bring up most about him.
He still writes those “thank-you notes” that his mom encouraged him to write as a boy. He makes an effort to learn peoples’ names and backgrounds. One former assistant coach for an Olympic sport at Virginia Tech said Beamer greeted him and knew everything about him the moment he stepped on campus. ESPN personality Marty Smith revealed that Beamer reached out to him to wish him well in his recovery from COVID-19 — and Beamer somehow found time to do it during the hiring process.
Those little things don’t always lead to big things. They don’t put points on the board and they don’t put wins on the schedule. But they do say something about Beamer’s character. Holloman was watching the press conference, too, and he said he believes Beamer when he talks about “leading with love.” He’s seen it for himself.
“My vision and core values that I’m big on — and I talked to the players about this yesterday — is love,” Beamer said. “And it may sound corny, but loving each other, loving this university, loving this team, and when you have that love within a football team, it resonates.
“Gratitude’s very big with me. Being grateful for being here. I’m a positive person, I’m a positive-energy guy, high energy on the practice field, high energy in the way that I live my life. And I want to be around people that have those same qualities. That’s something that I hope people see with this program.”
Cheryl and Frank have discussed moving from Blacksburg down to Charlotte, where their daughter, Casey, lives and where Columbia would only be a short trip away.
They’ve already made the trip. Two days after Shane, Emily, Hunter, Sutton and Olivia landed in Columbia for good, Shane tweeted another picture. It shows Shane and Frank standing side by side on the field at Williams-Brice Stadium. Young Hunter stands in front of them, wearing a gray Gamecocks hoodie, his smile still radiating.
“3 Generations of Beamer Boys in Williams-Brice tonight,” Shane tweeted, before adding one more word, a word he’s been waiting to use his entire life:
“Home.”
This story was originally published December 30, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
