Where USC’s recruiting budget ranks in SEC, and how Shane Beamer feels about it
The graph is stark.
In a story by AL.com that lays out the Fiscal Year 2024 recruiting budgets for SEC teams, South Carolina’s bar is dwarfed by a number of other schools.
The numbers were compiled by Freedom of Information Act requests and every SEC school aside from Vanderbilt — which is a private school and doesn’t have to grant FOIA requests — is included.
With that: South Carolina football spent $1.98 million in recruiting in FY24, which ran from July 1, 2023 through June 30, 2024. The Gamecocks football recruiting budget ranked ninth in the SEC, well below the biggest spenders: Tennessee ($5.4 million), Alabama, ($5.3 million), Texas A&M ($4.1 million), Georgia ($4.1 million).
The numbers alone lend you to believe there might be some drastic under-funding that is costing South Carolina dearly in recruiting.
Not only is it not affecting South Carolina, per coach Shane Beamer, he doesn’t feel like the Gamecocks are skimping on anything.
“We’ve never been told ‘no’ to anything we felt like we needed, from a recruiting standpoint,” Beamer said last week at the SEC spring meetings.
Beamer mentioned that about 10 recruits were coming to South Carolina’s campus this past weekend on official visits and, “I know they’re not gonna come and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, they cut corners here.’ ”
For his part, Beamer has some solid reference points. He was an assistant under Kirby Smart at Georgia for years before working under Lincoln Riley at Oklahoma.
One would think he would be able to tell some stark differences between the recruiting experience at Georgia and South Carolina, which spends less than half what the Bulldogs do in recruiting.
“I don’t really see anything different,” Beamer said. “I guess when you start itemizing things and talk about budgets and things like that, I guess I could be like, ‘All right, I see that. I see that.’ ”
If the recruiting budget is costing South Carolina prospects, it has not been apparent.
Under Beamer, the Gamecocks have pulled in Top-25 recruiting classes in each of the past four years, even attracting five stars such as WR Nyck Harbor, OL Josiah Thompson and edge Dylan Stewart.
And South Carolina has done that without exorbitant stunts used by other programs — such as photo shoots with Lamborghinis and, aside from one trip to land Thompson, the use of a helicopter.
“And it worked,” Beamer said of the helicopter ride to visit Thompson in Dillon.
With college athletic programs bracing for a world of revenue sharing and budget cuts, Beamer is trying to be diligent in how he uses money in recruiting.
“Just in regards to how we do things,” Beamer said, “I think we’re smart and responsible but certainly don’t take a back seat to anybody.”
