Over the last few days, a conspiracy theory about the Tennessee Vols' loss to the South Carolina Gamecocks in 2022 has spread across social media.
The theory is that Michigan shared Tennessee's sideline signals with South Carolina last season in an effort to disrupt the Vols' path to the playoff.
A report from Football Scoop on Wednesday night indicated that Michigan may have indeed shared information with another program in an effort to disrupt a top contender's path to the playoff, though Tennessee nor South Carolina were mentioned in that report.
For now, there's no evidence linking South Carolina to the scandal.
But some comments that South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer made on November 1, 2022 -- 18 days before the Gamecocks' 63-38 win against Tennessee -- might raise some eyebrows.
Beamer discussed, at length, his habit/practice of connecting with other coaches/programs to share information about tendencies, communication, etc.
Oddly enough, Beamer said he first started talking with other programs to share information when he was a graduate assistant at Tennessee under John Chavis in the early 2000s.
Beamer subtly suggested during his comments that he felt like Missouri might have had some of South Carolina's signals last season.
"When we play opponents that we don't play again, you usually try and connect with those coaches," said Beamer. "See what you had on us and what we had on you. Non conference teams, things like that. We have done that often. We dove into a self-scout during the off week and saw some tendencies that we had. Some of the communication that we had with some coaches from some other schools alerted us to some tendencies also. We are no different than any other team. We have tendencies that we are going to attack with Vanderbilt this week. There were tendencies that we tried to attack with Missouri run/pass. Every team has those tendencies. Certainly, a couple of them were a little concerning. I think there was a third-and-two that we had and we were in a bunch set which they were signaling pass. There are some things that we have tried to combat the last couple of weeks."
Beamer was asked by a reporter following those comments about how often opposing coaches are willing to share information.
"Usually I am not reaching out to them unless I know they are probably going to want to cooperate with me," said Beamer. "This goes all the way back to when I was a graduate assistant at Tennessee back in 2001 working for John Chavis. On Mondays or Sundays after a game, we -- the GA or the defensive coaches -- would be on the phone with the coaches from other schools that we just played. We are calling another SEC school to find about an SEC school that they just played. I used to joke, there should have just been a conference call with defensive coaches in the SEC back in the early 2000s every Monday morning because we were all talking to each other anyway. That has always been on going. I would say most of the time, it is typically a non-conference team that is not on your schedule anytime soon, [like] Charlotte. I don't think we are playing Charlotte anytime soon. After that game, being able to talk to some of their coaches or Georgia State, [we] don't play them anytime soon I don't think. Talking to them at the beginning of the season."
"Then you play teams in the SEC but you have teams, whether we talked to Arkansas or not, [there] is potential to talk to Arkansas when we don't play them again for a while down the road," continued Beamer. "I think most coaches are open to it. A lot of times, that may be a conversation that I have with the head coach before the game on the field is, 'Hey, we don't play each other again. We would love to get our staffs together and talk tomorrow if that is something that you are interested in doing.' They want the same information that we do."
To be clear, nothing the Beamer said here is damning. It's obvious that this is a widespread occurrence in college football. But the idea that Michigan may have reached out to South Carolina to share information isn't far-fetched at all after hearing these comments -- especially since we know Beamer has already been fined once for accepting information about a program's specific game plan.
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