You won’t hear Shane Beamer trashing Clemson football or Dabo Swinney
The past two coaches at South Carolina have had no problems taking shots at Clemson football, but things might be a little different with the new head ball coach of the Gamecocks.
Steve Spurrier has always been the kind of coach to deliver pointed quips in the direction of his rival and during a five-year streak in which he was beating Clemson football and leading his program to top-10 and even top-5 finishes, he had no trouble poking fun at the Tigers and heating up the rivalry.
Of course, Clemson finally did get the best of Spurrier and his lack of recruiting caught up with them, causing him to ultimately quit on the team midseason.
After closing out that putrid 2015 season in which Clemson went on to play for the National Championship, the Gamecocks went after another big name hoping to somehow return to the Spurrier years.
Though he never had any success like Spurrier, Will Muschamp didn’t mind taking pointed shots at the Tigers either. Now, the Gamecocks have moved on to another head coach- this time Shane Beamer- in the hopes of turning around their pathetic program.
While Beamer won’t be immune to the trash-talking that comes with a rivalry, he’s not going to take classless shots at Clemson football
Just like with any rivalry, Beamer is going to have times where he takes a shot or makes a competitive comment. He has commonly referred to Clemson as ‘that team in the upstate’ since taking over, but there’s no doubt that his respect for Dabo Swinney is going to go a long way in what he says.
"“Very much have a relationship with Dabo Swinney,” Beamer said in an interview with DawgNation. “In fact, he was one of the very first people that reached out to me when I got this job. We’ve talked two or three times since then. “We’re competitors. We’re rivals. But he is the same person – he was the recruiting coordinator at Clemson when I was at South Carolina as (an assistant coach). We kind of got to know each other during that time.”"
Beamer went on to say that he respects Swinney as a person and football coach and while he hopes to make the rivalry competitive, there is still a certain level of friendship between the two coaches.
"“(Swinney) is just a genuinely good person,” Beamer said. “Yeah, we’re rivals and competitors and we’re going to try to beat each others’ brains out on the football field and all that stuff, but you can still be appreciative for where you are and treat people the right way and he’s been very good to me since I’ve got this job, for sure.”"
There are several times during Will Muschamp’s career where he would take pointed shots at Clemson with no basis and they would come off as jealousy, conspiracy, ill-willed, or a mixture of all of those things.
That’s not going to be the case with Beamer, and that’s probably a smart move for him as he tries to build the Gamecock program.
No one can deny that Clemson and South Carolina are on different levels. The Gamecocks are struggling to be bowl eligible and the Tigers are competing for National Championships. They are not the same.
The best thing Beamer can try to do is maintain and healthy competitive relationship with Swinney because we all know that things don’t turn out well for coaches who try to have anything otherwise.
Swinney uses opposing coaches’ comments as fuel- as most coaches around the nation do- and he circles games when he has someone who elects to go out of their way to take shots at his program- we’re looking at you Dave Doeren.
Beamer is making the right call by attempting to keep the flame within the rivalry as miniscule as possible and he can always hope that he’ll sneak up on Clemson at some point and come away with a win because we all know the Spurrier-esque trash-talking isn’t going to work.