South Carolina’s biggest coaching legend and its current man leading the program’s resurgence will soon get another in-person opportunity to catch up on all things in Gamecock Country.
Steve Spurrier and Shane Beamer have been paired up together for the 15th annual Peach Bowl Challenge, a charity golf tournament in which an 11-team field of current and former college football coaches are going to compete for a share of a $330,000 purse.
Beamer and Spurrier will compete together on Tuesday at the National Course at Reynolds Lake Oconee just outside of Atlanta. They will square off with a field of current and former coaches – whose pairings were determined by balancing handicaps between teams – that also features:
– Beamer’s father Frank Beamer (Virginia Tech) and Dave Doeren (NC State)
– Dino Babers (Syracuse) and Chan Gailey (Georgia Tech)
– Mike Cavan (SMU) and Tom O’Brien (Boston College, NC State)
– Mark Dantonio (Michigan State, Cincinnati) and Jim Grobe (Ohio, Wake Forest, Baylor)
– Randy Edsall (Maryland, UConn) and Houston Nutt (Boise State, Arkansas, Ole Miss)
– Bobby Johnson (Vanderbilt) and Scott Satterfield (Louisville)
– Paul Johnson (Navy, Georgia Tech) and Jeff Monken (Army)
– Chip Lindsey (UCF) and Dan Mullen (Mississippi State, Florida)
– Pat Narduzzi (Pitt) and Rick Neuheisel (Colorado, Washington, UCLA)
– Kirby Smart (Georgia) and Tommy Tuberveille (Ole Miss, Auburn, Texas Tech, Cincinnati).
Beamer and Spurrier will be representing separate charities: The Beamer Family Foundation and the HBC Foundation while Frank Beamer will be representing the American Cancer Society.
The first-place duo will split $60,000 between the two winning coaches' charities, and the rest of the purse will be divided based on the finish of the other teams.
South Carolina’s all-time winningest football coach and the coach who got the program’s rebuild off to a fast start with a 7-6 record last season will surely have plenty of time to share stories and for Beamer to continue extracting some wisdom from the Head Ball Coach. Spurrier has showed his support ever since Beamer’s initial hiring, and that continued when he presented Beamer with the Steve Spurrier First-Year Coach of the Year Award in February.
“A lot of first-year coaches come in with all the excuses, ‘Man, we’re in disarray. This is gonna take two or three years.’ But that’s not what Coach Beamer came in and said,” Spurrier said. “Instead of doom and gloom, he came in and taught these guys some discipline, accountability, effort and all that kind of stuff that winners have.”