Shane Beamer shares more details on how he broke his foot after Florida loss

South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer popped up on the injury report this week with a broken foot. And unlike any of his players, Beamer didn’t suffer the injury on the field against Florida.

He revealed earlier in the week that he had kicked something after a gutting loss that included blowing a 10-point lead with around five minutes to play. On the SEC coaches teleconference on Wednesday, Beamer revealed he had booted a Gatorade cooler after leaving the field, resulting in the injury.

The Gamecocks head coach also acknowledged that he had heard the criticism from SEC Network talking head Paul Finebaum about the episode — but he didn’t offer up a direct response.

“I did. Don’t have a comment on that. And it was a Gatorade cooler. Wasn’t like I went in the locker room and just had some complete meltdown and went ballistic for five minutes of screaming and yelling and throwing and kicking things,” Beamer said, sounding like he was getting into a longer answer.

However, Beamer’s call into the teleconference cut off before he could continue.

“I was jogging off the field before —” Beamer said before the call dropped.

Finebaum didn’t hold back when criticizing Beamer

Beamer made sure to get out in front of the story and tell reporters about it before anything got out there. He said he didn’t think anything of it at first, but as it turned out, he has a broken bone in his foot.

Finebaum played the clip at the start of his show on Tuesday and shared his reaction.

“The producer just asked me to react to that. I don’t really know what to say,” Finebaum said. “I mean, this guy was laughing about it, cajoling, thinking it was like a high school frat prank. This is a head football coach at a major SEC school and he breaks his foot in frustration.

“If he had shown half that effort in trying to stop Florida from blowing them to pieces at the end of that game, I think maybe the season wouldn’t be on the brink of going straight down the toilet. That was really incredible.”

South Carolina had a 37-27 lead with nine minutes to play in the game, but Florida didn’t back down. The Gators scored 14 unanswered points before a safety at the end of the game made it a 41-39 Gators victory. Beamer was clearly frustrated in the postgame press conference, and it appears it spilled over beyond that.