The story behind why Shawn Elliott left Georgia State to rejoin the Gamecocks

Shawn Elliott doesn’t want his decision to be an indictment on the state of college football.

Last week, Elliott resigned as the head coach of Georgia State to return as an assistant coach at South Carolina — where he worked from 2010-16 under Steve Spurrier and Will Muschamp — to be the Gamecocks’ run-game coordinator and tight ends coach.

It was the third instance in under a month where a sitting FBS head coach left their post to take a coordinator position elsewhere. Three weeks ago, Boston College head coach Jeff Hafley quit to become the Green Bay Packers defensive coordinator. Not long after, UCLA head coach Chip Kelly took a job within his own conference and accepted the offensive coordinator gig at Ohio State.

All of that made Elliott’s decision to return to Columbia seem like a trend.

But while Elliott will admit the new age of college football presents problems — he says Power-5 programs poached 22 of his Georgia State players over the past two seasons — his decision had nothing to do with NIL or the transfer portal or the evolving responsibilities of a head coach in 2024, he said.

“That had no effect on me wanting to come back to the University of South Carolina or take this job,” Elliott said Tuesday during his introductory press conference. “I’m never a person who runs from a problem. I’ve always found a solution on how to fix it.”

Ever since he left South Carolina in 2016, Elliott still kept up with the Gamecocks. And when assistant coaching jobs came available, he checked what they were and sometimes inquired. When tight ends coach Justin Stepp left South Carolina to take a job at Illinois, Elliott went after the gig.

“I targeted it,” Elliott noted. “I reached out and wanted them to know that this was something I wanted to do.”

The decision all came down to family.

When Elliott took the Georgia State job in 2017, he moved to Atlanta alone. He lived in a condo just a short drive from the Panthers’ football facility while his family — wife Summer, daughter Maddyn and son Max — and parents continued to live in South Carolina.

For over seven years, Elliott made the three-hour commute from Atlanta once or twice a week to watch his daughter cheer or his son play football. And, unlike SEC head coaches, Elliott did not have ready access to a private jet. No, he made the 400-mile round trip drive himself, putting over 110,000 miles on his black GMC Sierra in less than three years.

On a typical Wednesday when Elliott’s son, Max, was in middle school, Georgia State practiced in the morning. Just after noon, Elliott waved goodbye to his assistants and hit the road, made the three-plus-hour commute to Columbia. He was in the stands for the Crayton Middle School football team’s 5 p.m. kickoff, watched the game then hopped back in his truck and drove back to Atlanta.

“I did it because that’s what I was supposed to do,” Elliott said. “That’s what I needed to do and nothing was going to stop me.”

Today, Maddyn and Max attend A.C. Flora High School. Max plays football for the Falcons, while Maddyn is a cheerleader.

Seven years ago, Elliott argued, he needed to become a head coach. He served as South Carolina’s interim head coach when Spurrier retired in 2015, but went just 1-5. He needed to leave USC and not just establish himself as a head coach, but prove to himself and everyone else that he was capable of thriving in that role.

In seven years leading the Panthers, Elliott took a young Georgia State program that had never recorded a winning season, much less won a bowl game, to never to four winning seasons and a quartet of bowl-game victories, including the 2023 Famous Idaho Potato Bowl title.

Some things about Elliott won’t change — he’s sure to have the same skull-cracking energy wherever he’s at. But his responsibilities will look different in 2024. He won’t need to fund-raise or worry about 100-plus football players. He will simply lead a small tight end room and serve as the Gamecocks’ run-game coordinator, a job where he’s still not sure of the specifics.

“I’m always trying to make our program better and he makes our program better,” South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer said of Elliott.

Whatever he does in Columbia, there will be a new level of peace.

Elliott told a simple story during his introductory press conference. He said he went to bed on Monday night at 10:15 p.m. and slept completely uninterrupted for seven hours. Folks with sleep apnea would not conjure so much joy in such a recollection. Elliott could not stop smiling.

Years ago, he dreamed of being not just a head coach, but a great program builder. Now, he dreams of the day he’s on the sidelines at South Carolina and sees familiar faces.

“One day,” he said, “if I could be coaching on that sideline and potentially coaching my son at the University of South Carolina and my daughter is cheering on that sideline, that’s a dream come true.”