One of the coaches who hired Shane Beamer, and arguably one of the main reasons why Beamer is the new coach at South Carolina, is Steve Spurrier.

Beamer himself said this week that if Spurrier hadn’t hired him to be an assistant with the Gamecocks, he probably wouldn’t be the head coach today. The boss offered his initial thoughts on the Beamer hire during an interview with Mike Gillespie of ABC-Columbia.

“I think he has a chance to do well,” Spurrier said. “Like he said the facilities and everything is in place there. If he can get us to a level we were at there in ’10 through ’13, that would be very good. It’s hard to say how somebody’s going to do until they get an opportunity to do it. So we’ve just got to hope and believe that he’s going to be a good head coach.”

Spurrier said there’s a whole bunch of great assistant coaches and whether they become good head coaches is simply a wait and see matter.

“He’ll have an opportunity, everything’s there for him to be successful,” Spurrier said.