Is 2025 the year South Carolina shocks the world ... or short-circuits?
On his 16th birthday, Shane Beamer did what all teens do and made the modern pilgrimage to the DMV.
Boys do not become men when they pass their driving test, but a license begins the journey. That’s why teenagers are often the only ones smiling in the Department of Motor Vehicles — they’re the ones getting their ticket to freedom.
Beamer passed his driving test on March 31, 1993 at the DMV in Christiansburg, Virginia. He took his picture moments before the man behind the counter stretched out his hand, gripping the fresh ID, not letting go.
“He looks me in the eye,” Beamer recalled. “and he says, ‘If you want to keep this thing, you tell your dad (he) better start winning some games around here.’ … I can still see his face to this day.”
Beamer has long understood the pressure of expectations. How that pressure can engulf coaches and players and families and become all-consuming. A year ago, his pressure was to right the ship. Get South Carolina back to a bowl. Back to winning. Now, the pressure is to lift the Gamecocks football program to its greatest season — to win 10 games, make the playoff and firmly be in the discussion for a national championship.
Even as the expectations change, the pressure endures.
In 1993, Frank Beamer was about to enter his seventh season at Virginia Tech after failing to lead the Hokies to a bowl game in the first six. It seems almost inconceivable in the present day that a program would afford so much patience of its football coach — but boy did it pay off.
The Hokies never again missed a bowl game under Frank Beamer (23 straight). Exactly nine months after Shane Beamer received his driver’s license, the Hokies won the Independence Bowl and capped off a nine-win season. They won 10 games two years later. By the end of the decade, they were playing in the national championship, where they fell to Florida State.
Shane Beamer told that story over a year ago, back when it was really on his mind. His daughter was about to turn 16 and was close to the day when she’d reach across the counter to collect her ID and be at the mercy of the DMV employee who saw the last name “Beamer.”
That was also back when the Gamecocks were coming off a 5-7 season, when Beamer’s longevity at South Carolina at least felt in question. He was by no means on the hot seat, but SEC coaches do not continually miss bowl games and keep their job. Beamer, of course, understands that.
He also knows that it only takes one special season for a football program to shed all of its history. To reinvent itself. One magical year for a good football program to turn into a powerhouse.
A year like Virginia Tech had in 1999. Back when Frank was taking home every coaching award and Shane was a senior long-snapper and this sensational dual-threat quarterback named Michael Vick turned Virginia Tech into seemingly the most-fun, most dominant team in the country. A season that propelled Virginia Tech into college football’s elite.
That is not to say the marker of USC’s long-term success rests on its 2025 finish. Or that LaNorris Sellers is Michael Vick. That anything short of a national title appearance is a failure. It is only to say that college football juggernauts often need a 10,000-watt jolt — an undefeated season, major bowl win, a trip to the national championship — to start rolling.
And the Gamecocks are standing beside an electric fence.
Does that mean if the Gamecocks don’t capitalize in 2025 — don’t make the playoff, don’t win 10 games, don’t fulfill Sellers’ potential — then they never will? Of course not. But the opportunity is ripe this season.
There is Sellers, who might be the most-talented, most-athletic quarterback to ever wear the garnet and black. There is Dylan Stewart, who’s played one year and is already being called the best defensive player in college football, drawing comparisons to Jadeveon Clowney.
There is a crop of a half-dozen freshman wide receivers, whose expectations seem to grow with every practice. There is a veteran defensive back room and an even-more veteran running back room, led by 25- and a 24-year-olds.
There is a fairly-easy front half of the schedule and a grueling back half where at least a handful of potential Top-10 matchups — vs. Alabama, vs. Oklahoma, vs. Clemson — are inside Williams-Brice Stadium.
There is hope that this can truly be the year everything breaks the way of the Gamecocks — a notion that frightens fans accustomed to rooting for a team that was long tortured by the Chicken Curse.
Save for four years (2010-13), expectations have not always been kind to South Carolina. The Gamecocks were ranked No. 13 in the 2025 preseason Associated Press poll, which brought reminders of the last time Carolina cracked the preseason rankings. Back when it entered the 2014 season at No. 9, lost the opener to Texas A&M by 24 points and barely made a bowl game.
Last season, though, felt like a shift. The Gamecocks became one of the most-exciting teams in America. After years of being defined by the new methods it found to lose games, South Carolina was pulling off miracles. The last-second win over Missouri. Sellers’ 3rd-and-16 touchdown run against Clemson. When South Carolina missed the playoff, even casual college football fans could see the injustice.
And all that did was add to the excitement for 2025. Carolina was right there. On the verge of getting that electric shock and picking up some steam toward the goal of being an elite college football program. But, hey, maybe this is the year.
South Carolina 2025 football schedule
Games listed with known kickoff times and TV channels
- Aug. 31: vs. Virginia Tech (Sunday) in Atlanta, 3 p.m. (ESPN)
- Sept. 6: vs. SC State, 7 p.m. (SEC Network Plus)
- Sept. 13: vs. Vanderbilt, 7 p.m. (ESPN) *OR* 7:45 p.m. (SEC Network)
- Sept. 20: at Missouri
- Sept. 27: vs. Kentucky
- Oct. 11: at LSU
- Oct. 18: vs. Oklahoma
- Oct. 25: vs. Alabama
- Nov. 1: at Ole Miss
- Nov. 15: at Texas A&M
- Nov. 22: vs. Coastal Carolina
- Nov. 29: vs. Clemson, noon (ESPN or ABC)
This story was originally published August 21, 2025 at 7:00 AM.
