I’m not super computer savvy …takes me a while to figure out the new stuff that comes out. I was convinced there was a dept. of people assigned to post here and amongst other social media in favor of Beamer when hired. Some of us called them sunshine pumpers, and I think most went away after a year or so. The last 2 weeks have reminded me of that time right after he was first hired.
Never had been a coordinator or HC before, and all the other reasons. I felt like he played the game of not wanting to bring in top coordinators that were long term solutions to make sure he wasn’t fostering his potential replacement most of his tenure….until OC Briles this year (when he knew it was now or never).
can you believe we were 1 year late courting Kirby smart and forced GA hand to make moves and secure him? SMH.
I should probably establish something before Gamecock fans start throwing things: I am a Clemson guy.
But my daughter went to South Carolina, and because of her I spent a lot of Saturdays in Columbia. I went to home games, tailgated around Williams Brice, got to know the atmosphere and found myself pulling for the Gamecocks when they were not playing Clemson. I had a lot of fun there. South Carolina fans show up, they care deeply, and they know how to make a football Saturday feel important.
I also learned that delusion can be part of the tailgate package.
Which is why I keep laughing when I hear, “We deserve better.”
Better than what, exactly?
South Carolina has been playing football since 1892 and has won one conference championship, the 1969 ACC title. Since joining the SEC in 1992, the Gamecocks have made one SEC Championship Game, in 2010, and Auburn beat them 56 to 17. The Spurrier years were the high point: three straight 11 win seasons and five straight wins over Clemson. I remember those five perfectly well and would prefer not to spend much time discussing them.
But that run matters for another reason. It was extraordinary because it was not normal South Carolina football.
That is where the current conversation loses me.
A bad season deserves criticism. Four and eight is bad. Shane Beamer should be judged on results, and nobody should pretend otherwise. But there is a difference between saying the program needs to improve and talking as if South Carolina has fallen from some long established place among college football’s elite.
It has not.
Beamer has already produced an eight win season and a nine win season, finished ranked in 2022 and 2024, and beaten Clemson twice. In 2024, South Carolina finished the regular season on a six game winning streak and worked its way into the national playoff conversation.
That happened at South Carolina, and not very long ago.
Then came one bad season and suddenly some people were ready to burn the thing down because they “deserve better.”
I heard versions of this kind of thing while tailgating there too. I loved the confidence. Sometimes it was even charming. You could be eating a burger in a parking lot with a team sitting at six wins and hear somebody explain how South Carolina was two recruits and a decent offensive coordinator away from Atlanta.
By dessert they were usually discussing the playoff.
Clemson probably made some of that worse. From 2015 through 2019, Clemson made the College Football Playoff five straight years and played for the national championship four times, winning two. When that is happening two hours up the road, it is easy to start measuring yourself against it.
But that run was not normal even for Clemson. There is a reason “Clemsoning” used to be part of the national football vocabulary. Clemson took years to build what it became, found the right coach, recruited at an elite level and then caught a stretch that most programs never experience.
South Carolina should absolutely want more. Fans should expect bowl games, ranked seasons and meaningful football late in the year. They should expect to beat Clemson often enough to make people like me miserable.
What I do not understand is acting as though any of that is guaranteed by history.
South Carolina has had four double digit win seasons in its entire football history. That does not mean expectations should be low. It just means expectations should have some relationship with reality.
And if you are going to fire a coach because you believe South Carolina deserves better, the next question cannot simply be, “Who could be better?”
It has to be, “Who is better, who will come here, and who is actually going to produce those results?”
There is always a mythical coach floating around college football message boards who recruits better, calls better plays, never loses anyone to the portal and apparently has spent his entire life dreaming of moving to Columbia.
If you find him, hire him.
Until then, I would be careful about confusing ambition with entitlement.
I spent enough Saturdays around Gamecock football to understand why people love it. I enjoyed those Saturdays too. The atmosphere was good, the tailgates were good, the people were fun, and somewhere along the way I started caring about what happened to South Carolina football because my daughter cared about that place.
I still pull for the Gamecocks most weeks.
But from the outside looking in, “we deserve better” still makes me laugh a little.
You can want better.
You can demand better.
Just make sure you know what “better” actually is before you run off what you already have.
And yes, I will still pull for South Carolina.
Just not that Saturday.
