When Shane Beamer told USC fans to ‘find some joy,’ this is what he meant by it
South Carolina football coach Shane Beamer opened up his weekly press conference Tuesday clearing up comments he made regarding fans’ possible reactions to MarShawn Lloyd not being able to play against Vanderbilt.
He likened the reaction to Lloyd’s absence to the mentality some carried when quarterback Luke Doty got injured last year.
“I’m sure (social media) was doom and gloom,” Beamer said after the Vanderbilt game. “We gotta get past that as a fan base, man. Find some joy.”
He explained Tuesday how his remark for “some” fans to “find some joy” was being spun to take on a whole new meaning altogether. He did not say where the narrative was coming from:
“Somehow this has become a narrative, so I want to go back two or three weeks to after the Vanderbilt game. I believe there’s a misconception that I called out our fan base for criticism ... which could not have been further from the truth.
“For those of you that were in the room that night, listened to the sound byte, I said there was a small portion of the fan base that when they found out that MarShawn Lloyd was not playing in the Vanderbilt game probably thought that it was over, that we didn’t have a chance to beat Vanderbilt.
“I said it’s the same group or same mentality that when Luke Doty got hurt in August last year, that so many people thought our season was going to go in the toilet after that.
“I said that we have to get past that as a fan base as find some joy.
“I did not say that I’m not subject to criticism. I am certainly open to criticism. I’m a head football coach and I’m the leader of this program. So fire the criticism at me because certainly I can take it. I grew up the son of a head football coach. I understand what this chair entails. I dealt with criticism of my father growing up. I’ve dealt with criticism as an assistant coach. And now as a head coach you deal with criticism.
“I get it. That’s part of the job. By no means was I calling out our fan base.
“There’s an old adage, Murphy’s Law, if something bad is going to happen, it’s going to happen. I’ve been hearing about that since I was an assistant coach here at South Carolina, about curses and things like that. There’s no dang curse.
“What I was trying to say that night in Nashville was, we need to get past that negative mindset of waiting for something bad to always happen here and that something bad is right around the corner. That’s when I used the expression, find some joy.
“I get it. With the way we played against Florida the other night, there wasn’t a lot of joy in that, nor do I expect people to find a lot joy in that.
“But I’m also not going to be on an emotional roller coaster every week as the head football coach and the leader of this football program. I’m going to try find the positives in everything.
“When we have an injury ... it’s the next-man up mentality, not ‘Oh my God, what are we gonna do right now because this guy is missing?’ That’s the message I was trying to make that night in Nashville.
“Apparently it’s taken on this whole other narrative that Shane is criticizing the greatest fans in America, which is not the case.”
This story was originally published November 15, 2022 at 2:37 PM with the headline "When Shane Beamer told USC fans to ‘find some joy,’ this is what he meant by it."
