Why South Carolina will be heavily featured in Netflix’s SEC show
Paul Martin needed somewhere to start.
He is the co-founder of Box to Box Films, the company behind Netflix’s F1 docuseries “Drive to Survive” and the group that followed around select SEC football programs for the entirety of the 2024 season. All that footage will be curated into a mini-series titled: “SEC Football: Any Given Saturday,” which premiered Tuesday.
But before there was any narrative or storylines, there were just thousands of hours of film and a million different options of where to start.
Martin and his team settled on the most infamous game of South Carolina’s season: The Gamecocks’ last-second loss to LSU on Sept. 21.
“It was a great place for us to start the series,” Martin told The State. “We always felt that in coach (Brian) Kelly and coach (Shane) Beamer, there were two coaches with very different approaches, very different personalities, and it was just a nice contrast in it. … And, you know, it obviously helped that it was an amazing game.”
Box to Box Films has done many of these athletic docuseries. “Drive to Survive,” centered around F1, is probably the most famous, but the company has also made shows on more niche topics: Horse racing, cycling, rugby, track, tennis, surfing and more. In a very short amount of time, the series has to grip a worldwide audience, has to get the viewer at home — regardless of their understanding of the sport — to grapple with the stakes.
Which leads Martin to one of his favorite shots of the series. The entire first episode is setting up the Carolina-LSU game to give you a sense of how much college football means and what that game means. It explains the backstory of Kelly and Beamer, the latter of whom got into coaching through his legendary dad. It talks with Beamer’s wife, Emily, who explains that she doesn’t enjoy going out following a USC loss because it feels like everyone is looking at them, blaming them.
The crescendo is the game, omitting anything relating to controversy — you’re not getting an interview with referees. And perhaps the defining moment is a postgame shot of Beamer in the locker room. He’s alone, looking up at the ceiling, and you’re left to wonder what thoughts are racing through his brain.
“Put against the story,” Martin said, “it suddenly becomes — you think you know the emotions he’s going through in that moment.”
The idea for this series got rolling during the 2024 SEC Media Days in Dallas. Martin and some Netflix folks set up 20-minute meetings with every coach in the conference, explaining their idea for the show and gauging what programs would allow them access.
What seemed to initially strike Beamer was the fact that Netflix was involved. He had been waiting to make a pitch.
“He walked in,” Martin recalled, laughing, “and said, ‘I’m only going to do this show if you give me a part in ‘Outer Banks.’ ”
For those unaware, “Outer Banks” is a teen mystery drama centered around kids in a beach town. It feels like the last show on earth that a football coach would watch, but the show has filmed in Charleston.
“Still haven’t gotten that call,” Beamer joked in late July. “I was hoping since they’re in the Carolinas we could do something, but that still hasn’t happened. But other than that, I was pleased.”
So was Martin. Though 10 teams allowed cameras to follow them, few gave as much access as Beamer and South Carolina.
“You need people like Coach Beamer in the show to give you that level of access,” Martin said. “You couldn’t have picked a better (family) unit and I think that’s why we kept going back and going back.”
It’s still unclear what moments will make the show, but the cameras followed Emily Beamer the entire day of the Nov. 2 Carolina-Texas A&M game, starting at her home and capturing her reaction in the suite as the Gamecocks pulled off an upset of the No. 10 Aggies. Another time, a crew went to the flag football practice of Hunter, Beamer’s son.
Beamer hasn’t seen the full series but joked that Martin and his crew had plenty of South Carolina footage from which to choose. And that was the goal, especially in the hopes that recruits are watching.
“We don’t have anything to hide,” Beamer said. “What you see is what you get. We tried to give them a very inside look at what this program’s about and the people in this program.”
This story was originally published August 4, 2025 at 7:00 AM.
