Shane Beamer already working to fill Gamecocks’ staff openings on offense
College football’s modern calendar doesn’t leave room to tackle tasks one at a time.
South Carolina still has three football games to play in its 2025 season with a single loss preventing bowl eligibility. At the same time, head coach Shane Beamer and his staff have to finalize recruiting before the first signing day Dec. 3. And they’ll have to figure out if players like LaNorris Sellers are staying in Columbia rather than entering the transfer portal or declaring for the NFL Draft.
On top of that lengthy to-do list, Beamer added more: Finding permanent replacements for offensive line coach Lonnie Teasley and offensive coordinator Mike Shula after firing the pair midseason.
Beamer took advantage of the Gamecocks’ bye week to get a head start on finding candidates.
“No matter what the coordinator situation looks like with ‘26 — whether it’s someone that’s already on staff, whether it’s somebody from the outside — the fact of the matter is, there’s two open positions on our offensive staff that I’ve got to fill, and having the bye week allows you to do some things from that standpoint,” he said. “I was able to utilize last week to do a lot of stuff: Recruit, prepare for A&M, work on our own team, but then also get a head start on some staffing decisions that I have to make after the season.”
The more pressing of the two seems to be the offensive coordinator job. USC has yet to find a long-term solution for the role in Beamer’s tenure. When he enters his sixth season as the Gamecocks’ head coach next fall, it will be with his fourth OC.
Marcus Satterfield left for the same role with Nebraska after an 8-5 2022 season, and Dowell Loggains left to be Appalachian State’s head coach after a 9-4 year in 2024. Satterfield, Loggains and Shula all had college and NFL experience before joining the Gamecocks.
Beamer wouldn’t make any promises about where the next offensive coordinator will come from, whether it be another college program, the NFL or an internal promotion of interim play caller Mike Furrey.
“I’m not closing the door on anything. I’m really trying to win these next three games ... and then looking at, OK, what gives us the best chance to be successful going forward?” he said. “It’s exciting that you can kind of structure this offense however you want it here, going into ‘26 with two openings to fill.”
Through the litany of questions in Beamer’s first in-person press conference since Shula’s firing, he made it clear that while filling the open positions is highly important, finishing out the season with his current group takes top priority.
“There’s nothing that I’m doing that is going to take me away from preparing our team to go perform our very best on Saturday,” he said. “But certainly you have an eye going forward.”
This story was originally published November 11, 2025 at 2:31 PM.
