Lincoln Riley says Shane Beamer will finish 2020, but won't be involved in recruiting
Shane Beamer will return to Norman to finish out the regular season and the Big 12 Championship Game, but he won’t be involved in recruiting any future Oklahoma players.
South Carolina gets that side of Beamer’s talents over the next few weeks.
Beamer on Sunday took over the South Carolina job vacated when Will Muschamp was fired. He missed last week’s game against Baylor, but OU coach Lincoln Riley said Monday during the Big 12 coaches teleconference that Beamer will be back later in the day on Monday.
“Shane will be back here this afternoon,” Riley said. “He’ll be with us at least through the next couple of games, and then once we play the next two games, we’ll figure out the rest from there.”
National Signing Day is Dec. 16, a week from Wednesday, so Riley said it wouldn’t make sense for Beamer to stay involved with any OU prospects.
“No, he’ll do everything without current team, but he won’t be involved in recruiting any future players right now,” Riley said. “He’ll use that time to do some work, obviously, for South Carolina and recruiting on that front. He’ll be a busy guy the next couple weeks.”
Beamer, 43, was OU’s assistant head coach and coached the tight ends and H-backs in his three years (2018-2020) at OU. He also had a big hand in developing OU’s special teams, though Riley has eschewed assigning a coordinator title.
Riley said he won’t need to “replace” Beamer as a recruiter because the current situation doesn’t demand it.
“With the fact that we can’t travel anywhere — that would be a factor if we were actually traveling to go see these (recruits),” Riley said. “We would activate somebody. But in this case, you know, we’ll use the staff that we have. Everything’s gonna be done virtually anyway, so I don’t anticipate much difference.”
Beamer was born in Charleston, SC, when his dad — Hall of Fame coach Frank Beamer — was an assistant at The Citadel. Beamer played for his dad at Virginia Tech, then began his coaching career at Georgia Tech and Tennessee. He coached at Mississippi State for three years, then spent the next 11 years at South Carolina, Virginia Tech and Georgia before coming to OU.
His time and experience on the East Coast opened up more than a few doors for the Sooners in recruiting. OU’s 2021 class includes four prospects from that area (QB Caleb Williams, WR Jalil Farooq, DB Damond Harmon and DT Kelvin Gilliam). Last year the Sooners landed three (LB Shane Whitter, OL Aaryn Parks, OL Anton Harrison). The 2019 freshman class included two (DT Derek Green and DE Joseph Wete), but Beamer was also involved in landing 5-star WR Jadon Haselwood from Georgia.
Clearly, Beamer’s East Coast networking and recruiting skills will be missed.
“Yeah, I think Shane made a lot of sense at the time,” Riley said, “and we were already starting to get into the East Coast a little bit more during kind of our early years here, some of our connections with guys that were already on the staff. So Shane was somebody that, his experience added to that. Obviously the East Coast has been a really strong area for us in the last couple years. Yeah, I mean, I’m confident about the staff’s ability that we have to recruit that area of the country as I am, honestly, any.”
Shane Beamer
David Purdy/Getty Images
Riley described some of his hiring thoughts from last year when he hired defensive ends/outside linebackers coach Jamar Cain and running backs coach DeMarco Murray, and how that process might apply in hiring Beamer’s replacement.
“As with any job, we’ll try to find the best person that we can,” Riley said, “and there’s not always a cookie-cutter definition for these things. You’ve got to weigh a lot of things. If you have other staff changes — which, I don’t anticipate any, this is not a precursor to anything — but if you have other staff changes and you’re potentially shuffling around responsibilities like we did last year when we hired Jamar and DeMarco, it wasn’t just as simple as hiring those guys. We shifted some responsibilities around to make it fit, and we’ll do the same thing this time.
“Really excited for him. It’s a great opportunity. He’s really excited about it. It’s a special thing for him and his family. It’s a great thing when people in your organization when people get a chance to move on to new and great opportunities. So, just very, very excited for him, appreciate all he’s done.”
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