That was a special moment I'd been dreaming of for a long time and it was really, really cool.Sean Rayford/AP South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer greets fans on his arrival at Williams-Brice Stadium before an NCAA college football game against Clemson Saturday, Nov. "To walk out of that room, seeing the reaction of my wife and kids when I shook my head 'yes' and told them it was real and happening I'll never forget. "It was something I'd been dreaming of hearing for a long time, and hearing him say that was better than I could've imagined," Beamer said. When Tanner's call came late Saturday night informing Beamer he was the selection, Beamer said the athletics director undertook a few minutes of small talk before asking, "Are you ready to do this?" This is a dream job for me because you've got everything in place to win." "I've been at some great places along with some great coaches, and I wasn't going to leave just to go check a box to say I was a head coach. "I've had opportunities in my career to be a head football coach," Beamer said. Late Saturday night, when he received a call from USC athletics director Ray Tanner that the job was his, he said his three children donned USC gear Beamer had kept from his previous Gamecocks' stint. It was all part of a daily plan to welcome him home with the utmost enthusiasm.īeamer said he would arrive home every evening to the song "Sandstorm" blaring throughout the house - it is a staple at home games for USC fans as they wave towels above their heads - as his 7-year-old son, Hunter, swirled a T-shirt high and proud. USC has retained such a stellar place in Beamer's heart that when the interview process began and it became clear he was one of the leading candidates, his family would contact him nightly as he drove home from the Oklahoma facilities to inquire about how close he was to the house. I don't know if she believed me or not, but she went along and we've worked 10 years to get back to this special place and, baby, we did it. "I told my wife if I ever wanted to be the head football coach at South Carolina I felt we needed to leave to go to Virginia Tech at that time and then ultimately come back. I'll never forget having this conversation," Beamer said. "Leaving here 10 years ago was extremely difficult. He described his four years in Columbia with his wife, Emily, and having two of his three children born during that time as "the greatest years of our life." When your head coach has the confidence Spurrier did, the players feed off of it and they played that way."īeamer left USC after the 2010 season, accepting an opportunity to be an assistant under his father at Virginia Tech but also having a hunch if he ever wanted to be USC's head coach for what he's described as his "dream job," this was the only decision he could make. "He's that way on the golf course and on the practice field. At that time a 30-year-old in just his fourth year as a full-time coach, Beamer joined a couple of other assistants on the golf course and "played pretty well, a little better than what I actually am." That led to those coaches reporting back to Spurrierthat the new guy on staff was a heck of a player. SHANE BEAMER WIFE FULLSpurrier, a notorious hard-core golfer, had his competitive nature on full display not long after Beamer joined USC. "To have a guy of his stature call to give me an opportunity was a really cool moment."īeamer acknowledged he learned a lot from Spurrier, pointing to the "confidence and swagger he lived his life with each and every day. "What a surreal moment that was," Beamer recalled. It was Spurrier, a coach he had long admired during his days leading the University of Florida and later Washington in the NFL while Beamer was still a young man in neighboring Virginia. Related: This football coach is a hire that South Carolina AD Ray Tanner must get right He was having lunch at a Starkville, Mississippi, restaurant when his cell phone rang. Beamer had just completed his third season at Mississippi State, having been on the first staff put together by Sylvester Croom, the SEC's first Black head coach. Beamer initially was hired at USC in 2007 by then-coach Steve Spurrier to become a part of his staff during the most successful period in USC history.
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