Becoming the head coach of the South Carolina football program was the dream job for Shane Beamer. That dream came true for him on December 5, when he received a call from the athletics director Ray Tanner, who offered him the job.
On Saturday morning, at Marty and McGee on the SEC Network, Beamer explained his joy at receiving that call and for the next few hours, but admitted with humor that not everyone in his family was as happy as he was.
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Beamer had a formal one-day interview early in the process and was in a great position to get the job, but Tanner had a few more conversations before offering the job to the former South Carolina technical assistant. As soon as they were completed early that Saturday night, Beamer got the call he expected.
“The night I found out I was getting the job was very special,” explained Beamer on the program.
“Coach Tanner called me and I was at my house, my whole family was there with me and we knew that I would get a call in one way or another that night. I felt really good about things, but you start to hear things. As you say, I tried to stay away from the Twitter machine. It was a stressful night.
“Coach Tanner called me, he chatted for about two or three minutes, which I’m still upset about. ‘How are you, what’s going on in the football world?’ He finally said, ‘Are you ready to do this?’ It was a very special moment when he said that and I was able to leave the room he was in and go back to the living room, I saw my family looking at me and I just shook my head. We had a bear hug as a group. I will say that we had a child who was not in the bear hug, she was on the floor crying and screaming because she did not want to move. It was a very special night. “
There was not much time for rest for Beamer, who boarded the plane the next morning to fly to Columbia. He met Tanner on the runway at Owens Field Airport after getting off the school’s private plane and heading to the football facility. Beamer stayed in town for a little over 24 hours, meeting with players and coaches.
“The next day, when you enter this building, I enter the office and there is already a sign with the name on the door that says: ‘Shane Beamer, Football coach at the University of South Carolina. ‘You walk into my office and look out of these giant glass windows and look straight into the Williams-Brice Stadium. It’s the moment when you’re like, ‘Here we go’. Certainly the dream has come true, but we are just getting started. The dream was not just to get here, it was to take this program to a level that has never been before, and that is what we work for every day ”.