Shane Beamer’s USC success opens door for position coaches to get more opportunities

The State caught up with a handful of national media personalities this month at the American Football Coaches Association convention in Charlotte to discuss the state of the South Carolina Gamecocks football program.

Here, we asked each pundit about Shane Beamer’s success in two years at USC and how it might impact other non-coordinators at getting a shot at head coaching gigs.

Adam Rittenberg, ESPN

“I think it’s good for guys who maybe have had different paths. Now, I don’t know if Shane Beamer is as successful at other schools as he would be at South Carolina. He’s a really good fit. Same with with (Sam) Pittman (at Arkansas). And that’s what you hear so much. Like, I think Joe Moorhead is a heck of a coach and was a terrible fit Mississippi State. Yeah, he should’ve never taken that job. We’ll see how his career goes from (Akron). So it really is all about, are you a fit at the school? And then, do they have enough courage to hire you, especially in the SEC, when you haven’t been a million-dollar coordinator for five years?”

Richard Johnson, Sports Illustrated

“I think there’s a couple of mitigating factors — because of who Shane’s dad is, so Shane knows everybody. Shane is always going to know everybody. Then there’s Shane’s personality. He’s gonna backslap everybody, he’s gonna meet everybody. So you’ve got some of that.

“But the other thing is, I actually kind of think it’s fascinating to hire a special teams coach to be head coach. Special teams guys see the roster in different ways, because they see what your guys on this unit or that unit can do. You’re evaluating movement skills in a different way. You’re evaluating football players in a different way. And you’re plugging into the game from different roster-building perspectives. I think hiring a special teams coach or somebody who has assisted on special teams is fascinating. I mean, it’s Bill Belichick. That’s Urban Meyer. That’s interesting to me.

“The base level, I thought Shane’s hire was interesting because of that. I do wonder how — especially being active in the portal and how the portal is these days — if that helps them evaluate talent.”

Brandon Marcello, 247Sports

“It’s opened the door a lot. I’ve heard it more these last two years from athletic directors that are more open to hiring position coaches based off of (1) what they’ve been able to do and handling their own rooms with recruiting, (2) keeping them together and then being able to hit the transfer portal and build rooms. And also guys who kind of completely buy into programs at their previous spots and they were able to kind of juice things up for the coordinators around them and, obviously, the head coach.

“It’s difficult to find guys like that — like a Shane Beamer, a (Arkansas head coach) Sam Pittman. Pittman being a veteran assistant coach who came from a national championship-winning program. Beamer, the son of a legend, but also a guy that was well-known in coaching circles as someone who was going to be a head coach at some point someday. And it didn’t matter if he was a play-caller or not. I think that it’s opened the door for it. At the very least, it’s opened the door for position coaches to more opportunities to interview for head coach than they have before.”