With Rattler pledge, Shane Beamer has South Carolina nationally relevant overnight
Shane Beamer didn’t just kick down the door to the college football consciousness on Monday night.
The first-year head coach blasted a bazooka through the frame and sent the sports world into a tizzy as former Oklahoma star quarterback Spencer Rattler and tight end Austin Stogner announced they were heading to Columbia.
“After a strong debut under Shane Beamer, South Carolina football just got a lot more interesting,” Yahoo Sports national reporter Pete Thamel tweeted shortly after the announcements.
Added The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel: “So South Carolina could go from having to start a GA at QB in 2021 to starting last summer’s preseason Heisman favorite in 2022.”
That Beamer has South Carolina in a position to land the highest of high-profile transfers after a 6-6 season speaks volumes to where the Gamecocks stand just over a year after their leading man was hired.
Will Muschamp was fired as the program fell into disarray. USC had six wins combined over his last two years in charge. Players were transferring out. The athletic department, too, had lost over $30 million amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
South Carolina was a mess. It was a mess, though, the starry-eyed Beamer took on happily and with an effervescence that would make the Lucky Charms leprechaun jealous.
But positivity alone doesn’t win football games. Watching four assistant coaches in Beamer’s initial wave of hires leave the program didn’t help either. Nor did quarterback injuries, depleted depth at receiver or a defense that many projected would take a big step backward.
Yet, here South Carolina sits.
“I know there was a lot of doom and gloom,” Beamer said in August after presumed starting quarterback Luke Doty’s preseason foot injury. “I saw and heard a lot about how the hopes of our season hinged on the results of an MRI and, frankly, that’s bull crap. We’ve got a hell of a football team and whether one guy is in or out, we’ve got 117 other guys ready to step up no matter who’s out.”
There are few times in the modern era of college football that South Carolina has been truly nationally relevant. The three 11-win seasons under Spurrier brought notoriety. So, too, did the 2010 win over Nick Saban and No. 1 Alabama. Things waffled toward the end of the Spurrier era and into the Muschamp period, though.
No more.
Notching a pledge from a player like Rattler doesn’t just excite a fan base — it puts college football on notice.
Players of Rattler’s caliber don’t grow on trees. They don’t even come around every recruiting cycle.
The former five-star prospect has elite arm talent. His mobility is next level. All of that is why he was a presumed Heisman front-runner entering the year. It’s also why his benching and subsequent departure from Oklahoma add intrigue to the match.
The harsh reality is, there’s no assurance Rattler will pan out at South Carolina. That said, he’s the kind of quarterback that, when clicking, can legitimately elevate a team from middle of the pack to great.
In an SEC East in which Georgia is rolling but the rest feels up for grabs, USC might just be able to find a window.
“You get a guy that you can count on back there behind the center, you’ve got a chance to be really good,” Rattler’s longtime quarterback trainer Mike Giovando told The State on Monday night. “And to know that, ‘Hey, man, we need a drive. We can put the ball in this guy’s hands right here and even maybe go get us the win as a coach, shoot.’ It’s like, let’s go put it in Spencer’s hands. Let’s go. He loves that kind of stuff.”
South Carolina is still almost a full year away from next season. Hell, the Gamecocks haven’t even played in their bowl game yet. But timelines and a one-off game against North Carolina in Charlotte suddenly seem inconsequential.
Beamer has preached patience, while assuring the Gamecocks are attempting to win now. It took time to quell the flames of the fire he inherited, but South Carolina is now rolling.
In the modern day of college football, the transfer portal allows programs to flip on their head overnight. South Carolina did exactly that on Monday with Rattler and Stogner’s commitments.
There’s nine months time between now and next fall, but for the first tangible time in the Beamer era, the nation is watching.
This story was originally published December 14, 2021 at 12:36 PM.
