Shane Beamer had a curious take on what Texas and Oklahoma have brought to the SEC.
At SEC Media Days, the South Carolina head coach was asked about the Longhorns and Sooners after their first two seasons in the league, and he made sure to praise Texas as a “premier athletic” program with a strong city in Austin. But when the conversation turned to recruiting, Beamer said the conference shift had opened doors in places South Carolina hadn’t really needed to chase before.
“The geographic footprint that I think it opens up for schools,” Beamer said. “We really didn't have a reason to go to Texas. Texas is not going to be a primary recruiting area for us, but it allows us the opportunity to maybe get in some doors and some schools that maybe we didn't before because Oklahoma and Texas were in the Big 12.”
He doubled down a bit later, adding, “We've got somebody committed from the state of Texas right now. We have a couple of other guys on our team from the state of Texas. So I think it opens up more geographic opportunities, or opens up more of a geographic footprint for all schools in the SEC,” Beamer said.
That’s a strange line to hear about Texas, a state that consistently pumps out top-tier high school talent and has long been one of the biggest recruiting hotbeds in the country. It also lands a little oddly with Texas A&M already having been in the SEC for nearly a decade and a half, and with Beamer’s own background: he was an assistant at Oklahoma just six years ago, coaching in that same recruiting neighborhood and facing Texas every season.
For South Carolina, though, the bigger story is what Beamer’s comments say about the Gamecocks’ own recruiting climb. Since taking over in 2021, his classes have mostly lived in the middle or lower half of the SEC pack.
The 2027 class is currently 10th in the conference. Last year’s class finished ninth.
In both 2025 and 2024, South Carolina landed 10th, after reaching its high point under Beamer with a seventh-place finish in 2023.
His first full recruiting cycle in 2022 ended with South Carolina ranked 13th out of the then-14 teams in the SEC.
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