Did Shane Beamer ever come close to becoming Virginia Tech’s head coach?
It could have been deja vu all over again.
Five years earlier, South Carolina Athletics Director Ray Tanner stood in Kirby Smart’s kitchen, dreaming up the next chapter of Gamecock football, only for Georgia to fire Mark Richt hours later and bring Smart home to lead his alma mater.
Now, in 2020, Tanner locked in his prime candidate to take over South Carolina.
Shane Beamer was 43 years old, in his third season as Oklahoma’s tight ends coach, and it was no secret that he might be a prime candidate for the Gamecocks. He was trending toward becoming a head coach and already had a familiarity with USC, having been an assistant on Steve Spurrier’s staff from 2007-10.
As South Carolina was searching for a head coach, Virginia Tech was in a precarious spot. With the Hokies, coming off a 5-6 season in head coach Justin Fuente’s fifth year, there was a thought that athletic director Whit Babcock might choose to take the football program in a different direction.
And if he did, who would be better than a Beamer?
Frank Beamer was already the most successful coach in Virginia Tech history, turning the Hokies into a powerhouse across nearly three decades as head coach. And Beamer not only played under his dad at Virginia Tech, but served as a Hokies assistant from 2011-15.
Naturally, folks inquired — just “not directly from anyone at Virginia Tech,” Beamer told The State in May.
“I had some people reach out who were affiliated with Virginia Tech,” he added. “I’ll leave it at that.”
Per a 2023 ESPN article, the people who called Beamer “said if he wanted the job, they would talk to Babcock on his behalf.”
Except Beamer didn’t want the job at his alma mater.
“I was gung-ho on South Carolina,” he said in May. “That was the only place I wanted to be.”
Asked if there was a moment when he thought his son might become head coach at Virginia Tech, Frank Beamer paused for a few seconds.
“No,” he told The State recently. “I mean, I didn’t know. But you know, he’s always loved South Carolina. … I think it’s a school that he really had dreamed of going back to. And so, you know, everything has a way of working out.”
Beamer, as you know, took the South Carolina job in December 2020 and now enters his fifth season as the Gamecocks’ head coach, which begins the year against Virginia Tech on Aug. 31.
The Hokies did not dismiss Fuente in 2020. They just waited a few months, firing him midway through a mediocre 2021 season.
His replacement was Brent Pry, who has yet to return Virginia Tech to anything even close to resembling the Frank Beamer years. In three years under Pry, the Hokies have won 16 games.
And now Pry will lead his squad against South Carolina, where thoughts of a sliding-doors moment will be present.
