Tim Beck is trying to turn CCU’s football program into a powerhouse. Here’s how

The Tim Beck era at Coastal Carolina will kickoff Sep. 2 in Pasadena, Calif against UCLA. With it comes high expectations and the hope that CCU can continue its dominance over the past three years.

But the hiring of Beck also has the potential to raise CCU’s national profile further still and create a college football powerhouse in Myrtle Beach’s backyard.

Successful college football teams can also have a massive economic impact on the surrounding areas.

According to Front Office Sports, home games for prominent college football teams like the University of Michigan, Ohio State and University of Wisconsin generated millions of dollars in economic impact for local businesses.

CCU believes Beck is the right person for that job. Having formerly coached several current NFL players, including star quarterback Joe Burrow, Beck has already taken steps to ensure CCU’s program continues its upward trajectory and potentially turns it into a juggernaut in the Sun Belt Conference and college football.

He’s built a coaching staff with a deep, national recruiting background and experience at the professional and Power Five levels, making it one of CCU’s most experienced ever.

Beck also completed one of the most impressive feats of his short tenure by retaining much of the roster that made CCU so successful the last three seasons.

Despite the NCAA transfer portal allowing players to leave for greener pastures, Beck got most of the team to buy into his vision of CCU.

That process started with convincing one of its best players to stay.

How Beck got Grayson McCall and Coastal Carolina’s roster to buy in

Beck’s ability to get the Chants to buy into his vision of the team was apparent at the Sun Belt Football Media Day. Beck has several standards he holds his players to.

One of them is “finishing.” For Beck, finishing means avoiding shortcuts and doing things to the best of your ability, whether on the field, in the classroom or life, Beck said.

Coastal Veterans like redshirt senior linebacker JT Killen have started talking about finishing, too, reiterating Beck’s mandate at Sun Belt Football Media Day in July. Beck began instilling his approach to football with one CCU star who looked like he was departing Conway.

Fifth-year quarterback Grayson McCall met Beck when it looked like his days in Conway were numbered.

“I met Coach Beck, and then a couple of days later I was in the (transfer) portal,” McCall remembered. “(I) explained it to him upfront, so he knew.”

McCall had one more year of eligibility due to the pandemic and wanted to see what opportunities he had outside of CCU.

One of the first things Beck did as head coach was try to keep McCall.

McCall said Beck recruited him heavily to stay. The pair talked football, and Beck pitched the fifth-year player that he would focus the team on McCall and help him get into the NFL.

With McCall’s reservations about leaving Conway, he decided to stay at CCU for his final year.

Beck also managed to retain much of the veteran talent on the roster. But Beck said he refrained from immediately sharing his vision for the future.

“What was I going to do? Stand in front of them, tell them how great this is going to be, and it’s going to be awesome,” Beck said. “They just lost their coach and their coaching staff. They weren’t ready to hear me.”

Instead, he gave them space before focusing on the program’s future.

“All I asked them to do is just listen to me, just give me a chance,” Beck remembered. “I said, ‘Go through spring if you guys don’t like it; leave if you think this is wrong.’”

The Chants did, and most of them decided to stay, giving Beck a veteran team heading into his first season as head coach.

Beck’s vision for the team includes allowing the players to run the locker room.

CCU has a unity council; the players select the members and create the culture in the locker room. A culture filled with mullets and colorfulness Beck has no intention of changing.

“They want to all shave their head and come out bald one day; they may all do that,” he said. “I didn’t tell them to do it, but they might, and it’s fun.”

The most experienced CCU coaching staff ever assembled.

Coaching that fun-loving veteran team is one of the most experienced coaching staffs in CCU history. Former head coaches at CCU, like Jamey Chadwell, had experience coaching at the college level before CCU.

But Chadwell never coached at a higher level than the FCS Division I and neither had much of the 2022-23 Coastal coaching staff.

Conversely, Beck and his coaching staff have years of combined experience at the highest levels of football.

Despite CCU being his first job as a college football head coach, Beck has previously coached at Power Five Conference schools Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio State, Texas and NC State.

Defensive Coordinator Craig Naivar has experience at USC, Rice, Kentucky and SMU, and other members of the coaching staff have worked at Power Five Schools and the NFL.

Naivar first met Beck through recruiting; the pair were also on the University of Texas coaching staff. Naivar said the two had previously discussed working together if Beck became a head coach.

“I said yes; in the back of my mind, I’m thinking it better be warm, and you better be able to win were the two checkmarks I had, in kidding with that,” Naivar said. Shortly after Beck took the head coaching job, Naivar joined CCU too.

Beck’s hires also have experience working for some of the most successful programs in college football. CCU’s new Director of Football Speed, Strength and Conditioning, Quinn Barham, previously worked with Beck on the 2016 Ohio State coaching staff, a team featuring future NFL players like Joe Burrow and Nick Bosa.

“Could I see myself working with him … making big-time decisions for a lot of people? I saw that in Coach Beck,’” Barham said. “I was like, ‘He’s going to be really good.’ The guys responded to him, JT Barrett loved him, Joe Burrow loved him.”

Given their track record in football, Beck delegates duties to his staff.

CCU Offensive Coordinator and Quarterbacks Coach Travis Trickett has spent years rising the ranks of college football and previously coached at West Virginia University and served as the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at the University of South Florida in 2022.

Beck’s honesty, vision and hands-off approach sold Trickett on coming to Coastal.

“He’s let us go,” Trickett said. “As far as the X’s and O’s, he’s going to let us do what we need to do because he has confidence in our staff.”

Barham agreed with Trickett’s assessment.

“Coach Beck is not a micro-manager,” Barham said. “He cares about (getting) the job done. Let’s get results.”

For Beck, it makes sense to let coaches like Trickett, who he repeatedly called an “innovative mind,” do their job unencumbered.

“When head coaches start to infiltrate into offense and defense and special teams and start telling guys how to do things, then you start having them do stuff they’re not comfortable with,” Beck said. “I’ve hired them to do a job, and I trust them.”

But Beck does impart his wisdom when the time is right.

“Where he helps us out is ‘Hey, have you thought about this? … Talk me through that?” Trickett added. “(Beck) does a good job of just honing in, sharpening what we do and really kind of just being the ultimate analyst, for lack of a better term.”

Recruiting for the future of the football program

The lifeblood of any successful program is recruiting, and Beck’s coaching staff has a national reach already producing results.

Beck is known for his recruiting prowess and has recruited current and former NFL players. He recruited Jeff Okudah and Dwayne Haskins while at Ohio State and Bijan Robinson while at Texas, according to 247Sports.

Defensive Coordinator Craig Naivar is also known for his recruiting skill. Beck also hired coaches with deep roots in South Carolina. Wide receivers coach Perry Parks played at Coastal beginning in 2002 and was a South Carolina high school head coach for almost a decade before jumping to the collegiate level.

“I know every high school coach in the state of South Carolina; I know a majority of high school coaches in Georgia,” Parks said. “We get a couple of calls on kids a little bit earlier.”

Cornerbacks coach Curtis Fuller, who played and coached in the NFL, was also a head coach at Myers Park High School in North Carolina and said part of the reason he came to CCU was the program’s potential.

“I’ve always known about Coastal Carolina; it’s a place where kids come to prove themselves. You don’t hear about a bunch of two and three-stars coming here, but you hear about Coastal winning,” Fuller said. “So it was an exciting call for me to come here knowing that you’re coming to a program and trying to take it to the next level.”

Fuller added that the new coaching staff allows Coastal to recruit at a higher level than it previously was.

“It’s taken a regional team Coastal Carolina and is somewhat making it a national team because now we’re pushing to the west, and we’re pushing in Texas,” Fuller said.

And those inroads are already paying off. Three-star cornerback Zach Cody from Coppell High School in Texas committed to CCU for the 2024-25 season.

“It’s huge because it’s a different dynamic,” Fuller added. “To grab somebody of Zach (Cody’s) caliber, his skill set, that’s a huge gift for this university.”

Beck is also building a recruiting network in the area, which he said could take time. Part of that process is creating an openness for high school coaches who want to come to practice, watch film and ask questions is part of that process.

“I was a high school coach; I know how valuable and important it is for a high school coach. That’s how we learn,” he added. “As a college coach, I realize how valuable they are because they control and have an influence on the players we’re one day potentially going to recruit.”