This wasn’t first time a Beamer tried to hire Bobo. Mutual admiration began years ago
Frank Beamer didn’t know the assistant coach calling the Georgia offense against his Virginia Tech football team was in the midst of a job tryout.
He was preparing his Hokies to face Georgia in the 2006 Chick-fil-A Bowl. On the other side, Bulldogs head coach Mark Richt was handing off one of his key duties, play calling, to Mike Bobo.
“We didn’t tell anybody about it,” Richt said. “I said, ‘Mike here’s the deal. You’re going to call the plays this game,’ and it was the bowl game. So I gave him time to get over the shock of it, to get over the thought of it and then I said, ‘If things go well, I’m going to tell everybody you called the plays.’ I said if things don’t go well, I’ll tell them I called the plays.”
The process had started with a Bulldogs game against Georgia Tech, a tight win, but it was still on a trial basis through the bowl.
The offensive production wasn’t eye-popping against a Beamer-Bud Foster defense ranked No. 1 in the country in points allowed, but Richt recalled Bobo doing a “super job.” The younger coach called plays for the Bulldogs for the next eight seasons and fielded some high-powered offenses in Athens before landing a head coaching job.
Shane Beamer, Frank’s son, recalled a decorated veteran coach’s experience against Bobo’s offense from that game as he selected Bobo to lead his first offense as South Carolina’s head coach.
“Bud Foster is a close friend of mine, the old defensive coordinator at Virginia Tech,” Shane Beamer said. “Bud and I were talking and I talked about Mike … and Bud still talks about what a great job he thought Mike Bobo did, how challenging that preparation was for him.”
Bobo is coming off a season that started with him working to jump-start the Gamecocks attack to get the Will Muschamp coaching tenure back on track. It ended with Bobo filling in as interim coach after Muschamp’s firing. The offense made strides in the run game, but never got the production from play-makers to get the pass game going.
But this didn’t deter Shane Beamer, who spent time Bobo’s alma mater of Georgia, coaching for one of his close friends, Kirby Smart. If Bobo wasn’t already in Columbia, he would’ve been the first call, Beamer said.
See, this isn’t the first time a Beamer tried to hire a Bobo.
Back in 2012, the Hokies offense was sputtering after a decade under Bryan Stinespring. Frank Beamer moved on from the longtime assistant and targeted Bobo, who had just guided the Bulldogs to better than 37 points per game with Aaron Murray and Todd Gurley.
They got as far as sending a plane down to Athens.
“Shane was the guy that mentioned Mike to me at that time,” Frank Beamer said. “We were going to offer him the job and it’s kind of an interesting story. If he got on the plane, he was going to accept the job there at Virginia Tech. So we were all waiting around for him, and come to find out he didn’t get on the plane.
“And he called and was apologizing, a very heartfelt, I felt like, apology.”
It was something the elder Beamer understood.
“I said, ‘Hey, you’re talking to the right guy,’” Frank Beamer said. “Very similar situation happened with me at North Carolina. When it came time to actually take the job, I couldn’t leave Virginia Tech at that time, and he couldn’t leave Georgia at that time. I said, ‘Hey, you’re talking to the exact right person because I’ve been through it. I’ve been through what you’re going through. Don’t worry a second about it. You’ve got to do what your heart tells you is right for you.’”
Shane Beamer was on that Virginia Tech staff when his father tried to pluck Bobo from the Bulldogs, and he had a few other brushes with Bobo early in his play-calling tenure.
The younger Beamer was on the offensive side of a Mississippi State staff that faced UGA in the stretch of offensive struggles that led Richt to make the change to Bobo (the Bulldogs had five turnovers in a 27-24 win, the only victory in a 1-4 stretch). The next year, Bobo’s first SEC game as a full-time play-caller was against Beamer’s new team, the Gamecocks, a 16-12 loss that kept the Bulldogs from playing for an SEC title. (Beamer was working with outside linebackers that season.)
Now a Beamer and Bobo will work together, trying to craft a new offensive identity in Columbia. Shane Beamer had faith to select the sitting coordinator with the knowledge that the 2020 season wasn’t an indication of his ability, and Bobo has a pretty good seal of approval helping his cause.
“I’ve always been impressed with Mike,” Frank Beamer said. “He’s called a lot of plays. He’s had a lot of experience. I think the philosophy is, he wants a tough offense, a good running offense that makes the pass off of it come very naturally. Wherever he’s been, I’ve always been impressed with Mike and how he does things.”
