Shane Beamer sad to see conference championship games scrapped with CFP expansion
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There’s a lot of good coming with the 24-team College Football Playoff if you’re a coach, administrator or school. Whether there’s good coming to fans because of it has yet to be seen. However, nobody can dispute that the loss of conference championships are a bad thing to most fanbases.
Shane Beamer has been around the block in his coaching career. He has seen how much fanbases across the country crave being their conference’s champion. And he’s just as disappointed as everyone else that those contests are fading from existence.
“I love conference championship games. It really makes me sad to see that go away,” Beamer said on Wednesday during a College Sports Radio hit on SiriusXM. “I’ve coached in three Big 12 Championship games… an ACC championship… [and] three SEC Championships… just being there as a fan, there’s nothing like it.”
Beamer remembered being at Tennessee in 2001 and hearing about the crowd the SEC Championship would bring. He was skeptical of the characterization he heard, but quickly found out he was told no lies.
“We beat Florida in The Swamp to go to the SEC Championship… the coaches say… ‘man, wait until you see what the SEC Championship is like,'” Beamer recalled. “‘We played in the national championship [in 1998]… but the atmosphere in the SEC Championship is gonna be twice [that]’… I remember thinking, ‘yeah, right’… [but] it’s unbelievable.”
South Carolina (6-3, 4-3 SEC) is making a late push to be part of this year’s CFP. The No. 17 Gamecocks battle Arkansas on Saturday night (7:45 p.m. ET) looking for their fifth straight win.
