Exclusive Q&A: Shane Beamer on Spencer Rattler, South Carolina football job vs Virginia Tech

COLUMBIA, S.C. – South Carolina football smashed expectations with seven victories in coach Shane Beamer's debut. Now, with a strong haul of transfers, the bar is raised.

During a wide-ranging interview with the USA TODAY Network, Beamer discussed South Carolina's momentum, quarterback Spencer Rattler's impact and how he balances pride for his dad's successful coaching career with a desire to forge his own path.

Here is a portion of that interview, with questions and answers edited for brevity and clarity.

What is the mood and the energy around this program?

Some would say at an all-time high. I’ve been at a bunch of Gamecock Club events. It seems like every one that I go to, more than one person comes up to me and says that they’ve been following South Carolina football their entire lives, and they’ve never been more excited than they are right now. So, I think the energy level is high.

[ INSIDE LOOK: Inside South Carolina football's ascent and 'great vibes' under Shane Beamer, and how Frank Beamer's son forged his own path | Toppmeyer ]

The way we finished the season last year helped – winning the bowl game, bringing in some impact transfers, the way recruiting has gone and is going, the expectations for this season. I think a lot of people just tell me they feel the energy that I have. That’s more just the excitement I have about being here and how much I do enjoy what I do. I think people sense that and feed off that.

Have you always had that energy and charisma? Is that something you work on, or does that have to be natural?

I think it’s got to be natural. Yes, I think I’ve always had that energy. I love what I do. I’m a relationship person, first and foremost. Wherever I’ve coached, whoever I’ve coached, I’ve always just enjoyed being out there. That’s always been me, and then becoming a head coach, I didn’t want to all of a sudden change and start acting a different way because I’m a head coach. So, for me, I love coaching. I love competing. I love what I do. And I love being around the players and coaches and staff.

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I never want this to be a place where people dread coming in the building each day. Don’t get me wrong, we coach them hard. We hold them accountable. It’s a demanding place. But, at the end of the day, they know that we care about them and love them.

This isn’t personal, but nowadays, when a coach says they plan to be somewhere for a long, long time, my inclination is to not believe that. Why should people believe you when you say you want to be here for a long time?

Great question and great point. From a personal standpoint, we love living here. Two of our three children were born here in Columbia. I was born in Charleston, so when I talk about home, this is somewhere that I’ve always wanted to be. My wife is from Starkville, Mississippi. We got married when I was coaching at Mississippi State. The first place we ever lived outside of her hometown as a married couple was Columbia. So, we have deep, personal ties here. My oldest daughter is going into eighth grade, and my son is going into third grade, and I would love to not have to move them again. I’ve got two girls that are 13 and 12, and moving is not easy at that age. They’ve made a great group of friends here. We love this community. We love this state. We want to retire in South Carolina whenever I’m done coaching.

All that is great, but if you’re not at place where you can be successful, it ain’t going to last long, because you’re going to have a hard time sustaining it, and I feel like we can here.

I understand that we may not have the tradition that other schools have that we compete with, but I don’t see why we can’t win at the highest level here and compete for championships. Ray Tanner has done it in baseball. Dawn Staley is currently doing it in basketball. We won at a high, high level when I was here as an assistant coach, and we didn’t have any of these resources that we have now.

I see what we have from an academic standpoint, from a football standpoint, from a facilities standpoint, from a leadership standpoint with our administration, from a recruiting base around us. We have what it takes here to win at the highest level.

Were you interested in the Virginia Tech opening last year?

No. I really wasn’t. It was flattering to hear my name mentioned, and don’t get me wrong, I moved there when I was 10 years old, and I lived there through college, and then I spent five years coaching with my dad, and I have great ties to Blacksburg and all that, but, no, I really wasn’t. Not for one second did I think about it, to be honest with you. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t have done that to these kids after being here for less than a year at that point and the relationships we had made. But, honestly, I’ve kind of done the Virginia Tech thing.

I’ve played there, I went to college there, I coached there, and my dad did some great things there, and I’ve got great respect for the people there, but I want to be at South Carolina, and I want to do it at South Carolina. My dad won championships at Virginia Tech. I want to carve my own path.

How do you handle being the son of a well-known, successful coach? Is it, chip on your shoulder? You mentioned wanting to carve your own path. Do you acknowledge some benefit from your pedigree? How do you approach it?

All of the above. Very proud of my dad, and certainly want to acknowledge that. Very much a chip on my shoulder, because even though this will be my 23rd year in coaching coming up, I still feel like – or, I tell myself, and maybe it’s true – some people say, ‘The only reason he’s in the position that he’s in is because his dad is Frank Beamer.’ Certainly, wanting to carve your own path. I finished up at Virginia Tech, graduated and knew I wanted to get into coaching. I didn’t want to just go work for my dad.

I look around and see a lot of sons of coaches, and they graduated college, and, immediately, their dad hires them. That works for some people. I’m not saying it’s the wrong thing. I didn’t want anyone to ever say that the only reason I had a job was because my dad hired me.

I’m not naïve. I realize my name got me in the door at places. But, I’ve got a stack of letters at our house here in Columbia that I saved from when I was a junior and a senior in college. I didn’t want my dad to ever pick up the phone and call somebody for me, so I’ve got a stack of letters of all these head coaches that I wrote when I was graduating college, knowing I wanted to get into coaching, just asking, trying to get on their staff as a graduate assistant.

I’ve got a stack of letters from coaches – from Bobby Bowden to Mack Brown to Carl Torbush – that wrote me back and took the time to say, ‘We don’t have anything right now. We’ll keep you in mind.' I’ve got those on a shelf in a room at our house just as a reminder, because I know how hard it is to get into it.

I’m aware that I was able to get my foot in the door, though, because of my dad and the connections. But, he always told me, once you get into it, it’s going to be up to you to keep yourself in it.

I went out on my own, started out as a graduate assistant at Georgia Tech and was gone 11 years coaching at different places before I went back to Virginia Tech.

But, still, to this day, very proud of my last name. Very proud of my dad. It’s a great resource for me, but also, I want to blaze my own path and be Shane Beamer and not Frank’s son.

Do you get tired of being asked about your dad all the time?

I don’t. No. I enjoy and am proud of him and what he did at Virginia Tech and what he built. I tell people all the time, probably the greatest thing I took from him is just how he treated people. He was the same guy in 1992, when Virginia Tech won two games, as he was at the end of his career, when he was going into the Hall of Fame. Success never changed him. He was always appreciative for the success that he had and the people around him. That’s why I don’t get tired of talking about him.

It never gets old going into a high school and having a high school coach come up to me and tell me about a conversation he had with my dad when my dad was coaching and how much it meant to him. Or, even this morning, we had a little kids camp, and I had a camper come up to me because they were a huge Michael Vick fan, and he was like, ‘Your dad is Frank Beamer?’

We even had a recruit here this weekend on an official visit, and I was talking to his dad, and his dad was like, ‘Beamer, as in Frank Beamer?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, Frank Beamer.’ When they figure out that’s my dad, it’s pretty cool. I like seeing their reaction.

What was your experience like coaching under Steve Spurrier here?

That was awesome. I can still remember obviously growing up, following his Florida teams. Living in Virginia, all you ever heard about was the Redskins – the Commanders, now. When he became the head coach of the Redskins, that was such a big deal, because that was the team in Virginia. Everybody there follows the Redskins, so that was a big deal.

One thing I took was just seeing how a team is going to very much take on the personality of their coach. And he was just very competitive but had that swag about himself, and our teams, as we got pretty good, just took on that mentality that he had, as well. It was a great experience, on and off the field, during my time here with him.

When I left after the 2010 season, I can remember talking to my wife about it, because we loved it here and didn’t really want to go, but I can remember telling my wife, ‘Ultimately, we would love to be the head football coach here at South Carolina, and to do that, I feel like we need to leave and then come back.’

I always kept an eye on this place, because, truly, we always wanted to come back. When Coach Spurrier retired and they hired Will Muschamp, I was trying like heck to get in on it then. I was at Virginia Tech at the time.

You were trying to get the head job?

Oh yeah. Not that I had a chance at it, at all, but I was doing everything in my power to try to get hired.

Ray Tanner told me that after you interviewed with him, you had to call and tell him you had COVID. Did you think you torpedoed the whole thing?

I did. I interviewed on a Friday, and then Sunday, I was back at Oklahoma, because we were getting ready for our game that week, and every Sunday you get your COVID test. I remember taking the test, and I felt OK. We had played Oklahoma State the week before, and it was a cold, rainy night in Norman during the game. So, I just figured I had this cold that had been nagging me. I remember seeing our team doctor’s number pop up on my cell phone, and I’m like, ‘Oh, god.’ I talked to him, and I just remember sitting there thinking, ‘Oh my god. Even if they want to hire me, they’re not going to wait for me to get out of COVID protocols.’

While interviewing for this job, did you have a good feel of your chances to hired?

I’d been preparing, since I left Columbia, to hopefully come back here as the head coach one day. So, it was easy to get your thoughts together.

I can remember, I cleared off my desk in Norman, and I wrote out all these notes. It was probably 10 pages of notes I wanted to convey during the phone interview. And I remember jumping on the phone call with Ray and Chance Miller, and honestly, I never even looked at those notes one time. It was easy, because I was passionate about what I was saying. It was a very easygoing conversation. I remember walking to my car that night to go home and calling my wife to tell her how it went and saying, ‘You know what, I really think I may get this thing.’ You can’t fake how comfortable and well that phone call went.

When we did the in-person, same thing. I kid Coach Tanner, I sat down and they interviewed me for like six hours, and never once did they let me get up and use the bathroom or anything. They gave me a bottle of water, and I just sat there and got grilled for six hours. But, six hours is up, and you’re like, ‘That flew by.’

So, I always felt really good about where I stood. You never know what’s going to happen, but it was one of those where if I hadn’t gotten it, I would have been crushed, but I felt good about where I was all along.

You’re a natural with the media, and perhaps that goes hand in hand with recruiting. How important is it nowadays to not just know ball, but to do all the other stuff surrounding the job?

It’s huge, because there’s so much more that goes into the head coach’s chair than just coaching football. So much more, especially at the college level. There’s recruiting. There’s fundraising. There’s working with academics. Coaching the team. There’s just so many things that go into it.

It helps, I feel like I’m a people person. I like getting to know people. I’m a relationship person. So, I like that aspect of it.

I’m a nerd in a lot of ways. I love watching other coaches’ press conferences and always have. Just hearing things they may say or coaching things they may say from a schematic standpoint – NFL coaches, college, whatever. There were a lot of times when I was an assistant coach, I would just put on a press conference during a game week of an NFL head coach, just to kind of listen and see what they’re saying.

I’m fortunate, too, that I’ve been around coaches wherever I’ve worked, I had experience with the media. That’s one of the things I always told Coach Tanner or any other athletic director that I interviewed for a head coaching job with.

The one knock on me was always, ‘Well, he’s never been an offensive coordinator,’ which I think is just complete garbage. So, what? I really, truly feel like the roles that I had before I came here to South Carolina prepared me to be a head coach better than any title I could have had as an offensive coordinator.

“I was the recruiting coordinator here. That goes into being a head coach, managing scholarship numbers. I’ve been an associate head coach, where you’ve got to handle a lot of duties of the head coach. Some places, that’s just a title. Some places, that’s really true. At Virginia Tech, I did a lot of the stuff on a day-to-day basis toward the end, just dealing with the media. I was an interim head coach one game where my dad missed the Military Bowl in 2014 because of a health issue, and I was the interim head coach for a month, and that was a great experience. I’ve coached offense. I’ve coached defense. I was a special teams coordinator. That’s the only coach that ever stands in front of the whole team and talks, other than the head coach.

So, the first time I ever addressed the South Carolina football team, it wasn’t like the first time I had ever addressed an entire time.

What does Spencer Rattler’s addition do for this program?

A lot. Perception-wise, locally and nationally, it was huge. Everyone knows who Spencer Rattler is. Last year at this time, he was a preseason Heisman candidate. Most people thought he was going to be a first-round draft pick. The fact that he transferred from Oklahoma, could have gone anywhere in the country, and chose to come to South Carolina, speaks volumes for the perception of this program.

And then here in the program, I think just the confidence he brings. Everybody kind of feeds off the quarterback, but he’s made our defense better. He’s made the offense better, just having a guy like that. That’s nothing against the quarterbacks we have, but the thing with Spencer is, he’s just got experience.

We’ve got high hopes for all our quarterbacks, but to have an older guy in there like Spencer, who has won a conference championship, has won a Cotton Bowl, is great.

There was speculation about whether he was a good teammate at Oklahoma. I know you’ve said previously that you saw only good things from him during your time at OU. What have you seen from him here? How do guys mesh with him?

He’s been even better than I could’ve expected, and I had no reservations bringing Spencer in here. I know Spencer Rattler, not what some person saw on some Netflix show that he did when he was 16 years old. I still have never watched that, but I’ve had people tell me that he came across in not a great way in that show. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I’ve never watched it. I don’t really care.

I got to know Spencer when he was a senior in high school and we were recruiting him, and then I spent two years with Spencer in our program at Oklahoma. I knew what kind of person he was and player, so I had no reservations about bringing him in. He’s been awesome since he got here. He just came in, worked hard, and tried to earn their respect with his actions and his work ethic, which he did.

As time has gone, since he got here in January, he’s getting more and more comfortable as a leader. We had a pretty intense conditioning session with our players a couple Fridays ago at the end of a weight workout. We’ve got three different groups that work out in the morning. Spencer is in the second group. I look outside, and the third group is our linemen, and they’re out there doing the conditioning workout, and he’s out there with them trying to encourage them – an hour and a half after his workout ended.

What were you thinking when you were covered in mayonnaise after the Duke's Mayo Bowl win?

I was thinking, ‘This is awful, but it definitely beats the alternative of not getting it dumped on me and being across the field in the losing locker room.'

It sounded great earlier in December, and you’re like, yeah, I’ll agree to it. Then there’s about three or four minutes left in the game where you realize you’re going to win it, and it hits you: Oh my god, I’m about to get mayonnaise dumped on me.

I don’t even like mayonnaise.

Same.

Blake Toppmeyer is an SEC Columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @btoppmeyer. If you enjoy Blake’s coverage, consider a digital subscription that will allow you access to all of it.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY NETWORK: Q&A: Shane Beamer talks Spencer Rattler; USC vs. Virginia Tech job