For South Carolina, if Shane Beamer is the guy, what will that mean for Mike Bobo?
If Shane Beamer is, in fact, the leader of the pack, like many first-year coaches, there is a good chance he will look to retain at least one member of the Will Muschamp coaching staff. And since Beamer does not have head coaching experience, it might be good advice — though extremely rare and almost unheard of — to keep offensive coordinator and interim coach Mike Bobo.
First, a bit about Beamer, the presumptive favorite:
Even though he’s 43, Beamer has coached multiple positions at several schools in the SEC, and in other leagues like the ACC and Big 12. Beamer played at Virginia Tech in the late 1990s under his father, Frank. Along with his father, the coaches who hired him before Lincoln Riley include Sylvester Croom, Steve Spurrier and Kirby Smart.
Beamer has spent the past 3 seasons at Oklahoma. Riley hired Beamer from Georgia, where he was special teams coordinator and tight ends coach for 2 seasons under Smart. Beamer was hired to be assistant head coach for offense and to coach the team’s tight ends and H-backs.
Before Georgia, Beamer was the associate head coach in charge of running backs at Virginia Tech from 2011-15. At the end of the 2014 season, he was the acting head coach at Tech for the Military Bowl while his father watched from the press box following throat surgery.
He was the cornerbacks coach at South Carolina from 2007-08, then served as its linebackers coach/special teams coordinator from 2009-10.
At South Carolina, Beamer coordinated the special teams under Spurrier and coached outside linebackers, and in his final 2 years was recruiting coordinator. He was nominated for the 2009 Broyles Award, which goes to the assistant coach of the year.
At Mississippi State in 2004, he spent three seasons coaching cornerbacks under Croom.
In 2018, Riley told The Oklahoman that Beamer should be in line to be a head coach in the future.
“He’s got all the characteristics,” Riley said. “I can’t think of a reason in the world why he wouldn’t. I was impressed with the way he recruited. I was impressed with the way his players played. I loved his background, that he had coached so many different positions.”
Those are the pros.
The cons are he has never hired a staff and has not called plays.
That’s why Bobo is even more valuable. The offense has upgraded the running game, and Bobo has developed two stars in Kevin Harris at running back and Shi Smith at receiver, which is not easy since defenses can largely focus on them. (Bobo also has every reason to lobby for the job. After all, between new coaches who are offensive-minded and/or call plays themselves, and relative new OC hires at places like Georgia and Auburn, there aren’t many places Bobo could land as an OC in the SEC. Kentucky may be the most logical if Eddie Gran is fired, other than longer shots at Tennessee and Vanderbilt.)
Bobo is a well-respected offensive coordinator, and at Colorado State as head coach, he led the Rams to 3 of the top-6 marks for total offense in a season as well as the school record for most yards per game in a season in 2017. Bobo also coached them to 3 of the top 7 scoring seasons in CSU history.
At Georgia, Bobo also was a Broyles Award finalist, this time in 2012, and during 92 games with the Bulldogs as OC, they scored 30-plus points 57 times, 40-plus points 29 times and more than 50 points 13 times.
It is extremely unusual (see below) for a new coach to retain an offensive coordinator, but if South Carolina hires Beamer, one of Beamer’s first moves should be to retain Bobo.
Several players Beamer helped recruit at that time have endorsed him as head coach, including former Gamecocks RB Marcus Lattimore, QB Stephen Garcia, DE Melvin Ingram and DB D.J. Swearinger.
Lattimore said, “I’ll say candidly, it was one of the most enjoyable experiences I had. And while I didn’t play a lot of special teams … he made you want to play special teams. He’s enthusiastic, he’s passionate and he’s somebody that knows the state.”
@GamecockFB LETS GET @CoachSBeamer IN SC AND BRING THAT CULTURE BACK!!!!!
— KINGMEL (@MelvinIngram) November 20, 2020
Coach Beamer and it’s a no freakin brainer.
— Stephen Garcia (@StephenGarcia) November 18, 2020
Coach Beamer!! 👀 We Need You back Big Dawg! @CoachSBeamer Say
Mr Tanner!! @RayTannerSC We Need Our Culture Back!! It got lost in the sauce somewhere in all the new equipment & coaches!!! Please!!! Bring Back The Coach That has that mentality!! He’s A Dawg!— DJ Swearinger (@JungleBoi_Swagg) November 26, 2020
Here is a look at current SEC head coaches and whether they retained the offensive coordinator when they took over, and if not, where that coach went:
- Alabama, 2007, Nick Saban: David Rader was not retained, and was out of coaching until he became Ole Miss co-offensive coordinator in 2010.
- Arkansas, 2020, Sam Pittman: Joe Craddock was not retained, now at UAB as tight ends coach
- Auburn, 2013, Gus Malzahn: Scot Loeffler was not retained, went to Virginia Tech.
- Florida, 2018, Dan Mullen: Doug Nussmeier was not retained, went to Dallas Cowboys as tight ends coach.
- Georgia, 2016, Kirby Smart: Brian Schottenheimer was not retained, went to Indianapolis Colts as quarterbacks coach.
- Kentucky, 2013, Mark Stoops: Randy Sanders was not retained, went to Florida State as co-offensive coordinator.
- LSU, 2016, Ed Orgeron: Cam Cameron was not retained, did not stay in coaching.
- Mississippi State, 2020, Mike Leach: Joe Moorhead did not name an offensive coordinator and called the plays himself. He went to Oregon as offensive coordinator.
- Missouri, 2020, Eli Drinkwitz: Derek Dooley was not retained, now a senior offensive assistant with the New York Giants.
- Ole Miss, 2020, Lane Kiffin: Rich Rodriguez was not retained, is not in coaching.
- South Carolina, 2016, Will Muschamp: G.A. Mangus was not retained, went to Kutztown University as offensive coordinator, quarterbacks and tight ends coach.
- Tennessee, 2017, Jeremy Pruitt: Mike DeBord went to Indiana as offensive coordinator and tight ends coach.
- Texas A&M, 2018, Jimbo Fisher: Noel Mazzone went to Arizona as offensive coordinator, quarterbacks coach.
IF he’s the guy…he has to put together a steller staff and let them coach. The ultimate question, will he be able to recruit at an elite level?
It’s no longer an arms race with facilities (everybody has great facilities now). Players want a path to the League.
Very well stated and you have to recruit high school kids who want to play pro ball and not just college ball. Kids who want to play college ball gets you between 6-8 wins per year. Kids who want to play pro ball gets you 9-12 wins per year in my opinion.
We already put wrs and dbs into the league and we produced more NFL starters than Clemson does
Bcreek…I agree 100% with you. Few people understand how important choosing the right staff members is to the overall success of any football program…and yes…permitting them to do their jobs(no micro-managing like the last Cock coach did.) I recall hearing Lou Holtz say the 1st hire he always made was the strength/conditioning coach. Hopefully Ray Tanner has learned something about hiring a head football coach…let’s hope so.
If USC takes Beamer over Chadwell, they are leaving themselves open to Chadwell going to Vanderbilt and remembering the snub every year. Can Ray Tanner take that risk?
Not sure it matters who Vandy gets.
I figure Chadwell would love a move up to a P5, but he’s going to have to roll the dice and respond if Vandy calls OR stay another year and work to duplicate what they did this year one more time. I would think Chadwell would be the lead for SC being already HC. Freeze went from Arkansas State in the Sun Belt to Ole Miss and that worked well record wise. Malzahn went from Arkansas State back to Auburn..you can be the judge of that but they do have winning records. Honestly Chadwell’s results are more impressive than Freeze and Malzahn.
I don’t think anyone’s too concerned about an angry HC at Vanderbilt. Even Franklin’s relative success at Vanderbilt was in large part due to the perennial top three in the East all having weird seasons, especially with injuries.
What a joke. Never been a head coach, never hired a complete football staff, and has never called offense plays even though he’s coached multiple offensive positions. Now there’s talk he keeps Mike Bobo. I have never in my 56 years of life felt more contempt and disgust for USC. I’m an alum and fan all my life.
This is why USC will ALWAYS wallow in mediocrity. Ray Tanner stinks to high hell. He’s a pathetic moron who couldn’t close the deal for Herman and Smart before his disaster called Muschamp, and now he can’t hire Hugh Freeze.
8 wins and a buttbowl invitation! That’s all you’ll ever get. Win 11 and get a dorm or weight room named after you. F’ing Carolina administration stinks!
Tom Herman couldn’t get it done with Texas so you’d still want him even now? We were not getting Smart once Georgia opened up thats why Richt got the boot because Smart was coming here. Freeze might not even be allowed into the SEC, Sankey wouldn’t let Saban hire him. Beamer is a great recruiter look at who he recruited during our 4 year run. Doom and gloom
I forgot to mention the PR disaster by Caslin and Dumbo Tanner regarding coaches stating they are not candidates for the job. Carolina and Tanner’s reputation stinks so bad coaches don’t want to even be associated with the job opening.
Not accurate, Keith, with respect to Tennessee’s offensive coordinator.
While Mike DeBord did indeed go to Indiana, he made this move the season before Butch Jones got fired. For that historically bad 2017 season, Butch Jones had Larry Scott as his offensive coordinator. DeBord had been running Indiana’s offense a year prior to Jeremy Pruitt being hired.
Larry Scott was not retained by Pruitt, who instead hired Tyson Helton from USC to be Tennessee’s Offensive Coordinator for the 2018 season.
It just crossed my mind that if VT opens up, Chadwell might just slide in there.
Or Freeze.
SOMEONE to at least start putting some competition back in the ACC so Clempson doesn’t have an easy ride to the championship every year.
Bobo would be excellent for developing Gunner and would probably keep the wolves away from trying to flip him.
What NFL QBs did Bobo help produce at Georgia? My IQ is running low this morning.