It's officially coaching search season and South Carolina Gamecocks head coach Shane Beamer is a name that's getting tossed around as an option for a recent opening.
Earlier this month, Mississippi State fired Zach Arnett as the program's head coach. Arnett, who served as the Bulldogs' defensive coordinator from 2020 to 2022, took over as the program's head coach late last year after the unfortunate passing of Mike Leach.
Arnett, who was certainly in a tough position, went 4-6 in 10 games this season, which wasn't terrible for his first season as a head coach. But Mississippi State, for whatever reason, felt like they need to go in another direction.
On Monday, ESPN's Adam Rittenberg speculated that Beamer could be an option to replace Arnett at Mississippi State.
Beamer is 5-6 through 11 games in 2023 and he's 19-17 so far at South Carolina since taking over as the program's head coach ahead of the 2021 season.
Rittenberg pointed out that Beamer, who was an assistant coach at Mississippi State from 2004 to 2006, has connections to Bulldogs athletic director Zac Selmon.
"Would athletics director Zac Selmon make a run at South Carolina coach Shane Beamer, who overlapped with him at Oklahoma from 2018 to 2020, and spent 2004 to 2006 on staff at Mississippi State?," wrote Rittenberg this week.
Beamer addressed the speculation about the Mississippi State job last week by telling reporters that he's happy in Columbia and considers South Carolina a "dream job".
I can't imagine Beamer willingly leaving South Carolina for Mississippi State. And I don't see why South Carolina would want to move on from Beamer this quickly. He's fared well in a tough conference. And South Carolina can just look at Eli Drinktwitz's trajectory at Missouri (17-19 through his first three seasons before going 9-2 this season) as a reason to exercise patience with Beamer.
You never say never when it comes to coaching search season -- we've seen some crazy things over the years -- but Beamer to Mississippi State feels incredibly unlikely.
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