South Carolina coach Shane Beamer told his team on Sunday morning that there is no truth to a report that he's a candidate for the vacant job at Virginia Tech, his alma mater and where his father, Frank Beamer, is a coaching legend.
"I have no idea where that story came from," Beamer told media later Sunday about a CBS Sports report on Saturday night that multiple members of Virginia Tech's coaching search committee are pushing for his return.
"I have conveyed publicly many times how much I want to
be here," Beamer said at his regular Sunday teleconference. "This is my dream job. I said that when I came here, nothing has changed. I am pissed off at the way we are performing right now, and it's not acceptable. I came here to win a championship, and right now we're not getting it done, and my focus right now is on getting it fixed. ... We're in a storm right now that that I'm going to get us out of."
The Gamecocks fell to 3-4 overall, 1-4 in the Southeastern Conference, with the 26-7 home loss on Saturday to No. 14 Oklahoma. The CBS Sports report said Beamer's exit was more legitimate than mere speculation based on sources at Virginia Tech, which fired Brent Pry on Sept. 14.
Beamer said he told his team that the article proposed that he was looking for a "parachute" to leave South Carolina and viewed Virginia Tech as a "soft landing spot."
"When you're 3-4, there's all kinds of noise and chatter and speculation out there about all kinds of things," Beamer said at his teleconference. "I wanted to make sure our players understood that I'm not focused on anything but getting this right. And that I'm gonna get it right."
Beamer, 48, is 32-26 (.552) at South Carolina, 1-2 in bowl games since getting his first head coaching position in 2021. His team was ranked No. 13 in the AP preseason poll and No. 10 during this season -- the highest the program has been in his four-plus seasons.
The Gamecocks bounced back from a 5-7 campaign in 2023 with a 9-4 mark last season. He was rewarded in January with new contract through the end of 2030 that pays him $8.15 million this season with $100,000 annual raises, according to an ESPN report. He was due to make about $6.6 million in 2025 under a previous extension that he signed in 2023, per ESPN.
If Beamer were to leave South Carolina in the first year, the buyout is $5 million, decreasing by $1 million each year of the deal, per the report.
Beamer played at Virginia Tech in 1995-99 and was an assistant head coach under his father in 2011-15. Frank Beamer coached in Blacksburg, Va., from 1987-2015, going 238-121-2 (.662) and 11-12 in bowl games.
Frank Beamer, the all-time winningest coach after 29 seasons at his alma mater, was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2018.
--Field Level Media
