Where the Sporting News ranks Shane Beamer among college football's top coaches
Recently, the Sporting News released its 2025 preseason rankings of all 136 FBS football head coaches. Following a strong 9-win campaign in 2024, South Carolina headman Shane Beamer moved up. However, the fourth-year, top-20 effort didn’t improve Beamer’s standing much.
According to the Sporting News, Shane Beamer is the No. 40 overall head coach in the country. That marked a one-spot improvement from Beamer’s place in last preseason’s rankings. Because he was outside of the top 25, the outlet didn’t explain its reasoning behind Beamer’s ranking.
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Beamer’s spot puts him ninth in the SEC. Beamer has beaten four coaches ahead of him on the list, including Clemson’s Dabo Swinney (3), Tennessee’s Josh Heupel (11), Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz (21), and Texas A&M’s Mike Elko (26). Three of those (Swinney, Drinkwitz, and Elko) lost to Beamer in 2024. Also notably ahead of Beame is North Carolina head coach Bill Belichick, who has yet to coach a collegiate game, and a pair of coaches who led their teams to losing records last season in Utah’s Ty Whittingham (13), Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy (27), Florida State’s Mike Norvell (28), Wisconsin’s Luke Fickell (29), NC State’s Dave Doeren (35), and Kansas’ Lance Liepold (38).
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This season, Beamer will face off against Swinney, Drinkwitz, and Elko again and also will lead the Gamecocks against Brent Pry (62) and Virginia Tech, Clark Lea (60) and Vanderbilt, Mark Stoops (45) and Kentucky, Brian Kelly (9) and LSU, Brent Venables (41) and Oklahoma, Kalen DeBoer (6) and Alabama, Lane Kiffin (10) and Ole Miss, and Tim Beck (103) and Coastal Carolina. South Carolina State is an FCS program, so head coach Chennis Berry was not included in the rankings.
So far, through four seasons at the helm in Columbia, Beamer owns the program record for wins in a coach’s first four years. His 29 victories are one more than Steve Spurrier’s 28 from 2005-2008.