Shane Beamer details how he applied the lessons he learned at Oklahoma into being a head coach

Shane Beamer applied a lot of lessons learned from Oklahoma at South Carolina when it came to recruiting.

When it comes to traveling the country for the best players, you have to do just that. The facts are the facts, as Beamer pointed out.

South Carolina and Oklahoma are as populated as a state like Georgia or California.

“Yeah, it was good for me going to Oklahoma just because I was coming from Georgia at the time,” Beamer said at SEC Media Days. “Huge state, tons of Power Five football players that are coming out of high school football programs in the state of Georgia. Not as many coming out of the state of Oklahoma. It just is what it is. (It’s a program) that location wise, that you’re in the middle of the country.

“So you can hop on a plane and be in California and about the same amount of time that you could hop on a plane and be in Washington DC. And I may get on a plane and fly to Washington DC to go see Caleb Williams and Cale Gundy may have been getting on a plane to fly to California to see a Grant Calcaterra or somebody so just the ability to recruit nationally.”

Coaching under Lincooln Riley with the Sooners, at the time, also gave Beamer a boost in how to do recruiting at this level.

“Being with Lincoln Riley and that recruiting team (it was) just a new way of doing things, new way of seeing things,” Beamer said. “(I saw it at a program) not like Georgia, because that’s where I was coming from. And then being in a state, this isn’t a knock on South Carolina football, it’s facts, the population of the state of South Carolina isn’t what the state of Texas is. And it isn’t what the state of Georgia is.

“So therefore there’s fewer Power Five players coming out of the state of South Carolina each and every year then, you know, Texas and Georgia and California, a lot of states can say that. So being able to be creative on recruiting outside your state, like we had to do with Oklahoma was beneficial for me coming back to South Carolina also.”

Regardless of recruiting wins, Beamer knows there aren’t many expectations from the media this year. South Carolina was picked near the bottom of the SEC this year coming off a 5-7 season.

Beamer is 20-18 in three years with the Gamecocks.