Shane Beamer is an ABC kind of coach: Always be recruiting.
It’s the lifeblood of any college football program, even in the NCAA Transfer Portal era. That, as much as anything else, is why Beamer intends to keep the Garnet and Black spring game as part of the South Carolina football program. But there are a “multitude of reasons” why he’ll do what he can to make sure there’s some sort of a game, to wrap up spring ball.
“Number one, I don’t think having a spring game or not having a spring game is going to prevent teams from trying to tamper with our players,” Beamer said. “Teams know who is on our roster. They don’t need to watch a spring game to say, ‘Oh man, that guy is a pretty good player. Let’s see if we can get him to go in the portal.’
“Two, I hear people talk about injuries. For us, we have 13 practices leading up to the spring game. It is not like we go out there and play two-hand touch. There are injuries that can happen in practice, as well. Don’t get me wrong, we lost our starting left tackle two years ago in the spring game to an ACL injury. I understand that injuries can happen in a spring game, but they can also happen in practice in the 32 days leading up to spring game. I get that. That is something that isn’t weighing heavily on my mind, necessarily.”
The benefits outweigh the risks.
“One, for the fans. It is awesome for our fans to be able to come out and see our football team perform in Williams-Brice Stadium,” Beamer said. “Some people that maybe aren’t able to come to a home game in Columbia on a Saturday, they are able to come and watch us in the spring game. I don’t want to take that away from any of them.
“Two, I think maybe some of these schools that aren’t having spring games, they maybe draw 1,000 people, at best, and maybe not all of them. Look, I get it. Nebraska is not having a spring game. They sell out their spring games. I am not attacking Nebraska. There are schools that if you watch their spring game, there is nobody in the stands. That is not going to be the case for us.”
Here’s where the recruiting aspect comes in.
Since 2022, South Carolina has hosted a ton of recruits for the Garnet and Black spring game. It probably would’ve been the case in 2021, but recruits still weren’t allowed to visit schools at that time, because of the pandemic.
Several notable recruits have been on campus for the first two days of spring ball. More will come in over the next few weeks, with April 18 serving as a grand finale of sorts.
“That is a huge recruiting tool for us and we are doing it on a Friday night this year,” Beamer said. “There are no other spring games going on that I am aware of on that Friday night. It will be a great recruiting experience for us. I don’t want to lose that because a spring game in Williams-Brice is different than a spring game in maybe some places that I have watched on television before.”
Beamer went on to echo the sentiments Colorado coach Deion Sanders recently shared.
“I have been on the soapbox for 15 years and almost 20 years now about I wish we had a preseason game in college football. We don’t in 2025,” Beamer said. “The benefits of our players being able to go perform in front of a crowd. … All of our freshmen, if they are all basically here right now going through spring practice, except for five guys. They get a chance to go play in front of however many thousands of people that we are going to have out there. It is going to be a lot. For a lot of guys, it is the biggest crowd that they have ever played in front of in their life because it is bigger than any crowd they played in in high school.
“They get that experience and the first time they do it isn’t in front of 70,000 people in Atlanta against Virginia Tech. Probably more than anything, our guys love to compete. They love to compete. That is an opportunity to go in Williams-Brice Stadium in front of a crowd and compete in a game setting. If I told our players that we weren’t having a spring game, I think they would be pretty dang disappointed because of how much they do love to compete.”
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