SEC Media Days can turn into a minefield for coaches, especially when the questions drift beyond their own program and into the land of future opponents and old grudges. On Tuesday, Tennessee came up twice - first to Georgia’s Kirby Smart, then to South Carolina’s Shane Beamer - and both coaches handled it with the same basic instinct: don’t take the bait.
Smart was first asked what it meant not to have longtime rival Tennessee on the schedule and whether that felt like a win being removed. He shut that down quickly: “Yeah, you said that, not me. It’s a tough place to play and tough team to play.”
Beamer got a similar setup a little later, and he leaned right into Smart’s response. Asked whether South Carolina had increased the fireworks budget after the Gamecocks ran out of celebratory sparks in the 2022 win over Tennessee, Beamer answered, “Alright, I saw the question that Kirby got about Tennessee.
Was that from you, too? Okay, and he said, ‘You said that, not me.’
You said that, not me.”
That 2022 meeting is still the reference point here, and Beamer didn’t dodge that part of it. He called it “a great night back in 2022” and said there’s no question Tennessee will be a major challenge when it comes to Columbia this fall. He also noted how strange it has been not seeing the Vols on South Carolina’s schedule the last couple of years, especially with Florida back in the mix too.
“It’ll be great having Tennessee back on the schedule this season, too, along with Florida. Three old SEC East opponents and rivals for South Carolina.
Got a ton of respect for Coach Heupel and the way he does things. We know he’s going to have a really good team coming to town.
I was so impressed watching SEC Media Day yesterday. The three players he brought, I mean, so impressed with those three guys as people with some of their comments.
No, that’ll be a big one when we get to that one. Hopefully we can have the offensive output that we had the last time they were in town.”
The numbers tell the rest of the story. Tennessee leads the all-time series 27-11-2, and the Vols got their revenge in 2023 with a 41-20 win in Knoxville. But the 2022 game still hangs over this matchup because South Carolina hammered Tennessee 63-38, and quarterback Hendon Hooker suffered a career-altering ACL tear in the penultimate week of the regular season.
This year’s game will come on Oct. 24, and it won’t be a night game like the 2022 meeting. It’s set for the Flex window, with kickoff expected somewhere between 3:30 and 4:30 p.m. ET, and the exact time will be announced later.
Before that trip to Columbia, Tennessee will go through Furman, Kennesaw State, Georgia Tech, Texas, Auburn, Arkansas, and Alabama. South Carolina’s path includes Kent State, Towson, Mississippi State, Alabama, Kentucky, and Florida, and the Gamecocks will have a bye week before Tennessee arrives at Williams-Brice Stadium.
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