and whenever else the team needs it during the game. It's hearing the Gamecocks' other musical tradition, their entrance to the theme from "2001: A Space Odyssey." It's waving towels and jumping to all 136 beats per minute of "Sandstorm" before kickoff. It's getting to hear the roar of a crowd after a year when that was muted with capacity limited to 20,000 fans. 4 certainly isn't the matchup with Eastern Illinois. Fans know the rebuilding work is just beginning after going 6-16 in the past two seasons.īut, like Nutt said, that doesn't matter. The Gamecocks were picked to finish second to last in the SEC East in the league's preseason media poll, ahead of only Vanderbilt.
Now he's back in Columbia to relive the real thing with 80,000 or so of his devotees in the stands. My daughter, they'd all be waving their towels." My son would have his shirt off, waving it in the air. "I'd walk in my house in Norman at night and my family would have it in there blaring. "We were waiting to hear and praying that it was going to work out that I'd get the opportunity to come here," Beamer said. And while he was assistant head coach under Lincoln Riley at Oklahoma, his family adopted it as a harbinger of hope after Beamer interviewed for the South Carolina job this offseason. He confesses he watches YouTube clips of "Sandstorm" - Coaches! Just like us! - to get his blood pumping. "But I certainly remember thinking that was different, and was obviously blown away by the intensity of it." "I'm pretty locked in on the game," Beamer said this week. "In all my time, I've never done that before, and it just kind of kept the party going."īeamer said it can be hard to pinpoint a cultural moment in the heat of it. "We played it again, just back to back," he said. They found it on those two plays against Ole Miss. He tried it again at South Carolina, and the reception was good enough that he wanted to save it for a key moment. He said he previously played the song at Vandy, and it didn't take off.
Nichols, who came to South Carolina from Vanderbilt, added "Sandstorm" to the playlist at Williams-Brice. I guess I gotta take it."Įric Nichols, South Carolina's chief marketing and branding officer, deserves some credit as well. "I didn't know I was gonna get credit for that. "Boy, that was a bad night," Nutt said, laughing. "You hear and immediately - I do, and I'm sure most people do - think of South Carolina football," coach Shane Beamer said. I said, 'This fanbase is unbelievable!' From that time on, in my 14 years in the SEC, the one thing I knew is that South Carolina, that place is gonna be rockin'."īut he still was surprised to learn in 2021 that his pain was the genesis of the tradition. "I thought, 'Well, they're not having a good year so the people won't show up.' And I'll be dadgum, I look up and there's 80,000 people in the stands. "In 1998, that was my first experience ever in Columbia, South Carolina," Houston Nutt said. The atmosphere was no surprise to the coach on the losing end, who had learned not to underestimate Gamecocks fans in his first year as a head coach at Arkansas, even when playing a team that finished 1-10 - with that one win coming in the season opener against a 1-10 Ball State team. The Gamecocks had beaten a top-5 team at home. Now facing fourth-and-19, Snead threw an incompletion and the upset was sealed. Amid the chaos, Ole Miss got a substitution penalty. Before fourth down, "Sandstorm" blared again. The Gamecocks' defense sacked Ole Miss quarterback Jevan Snead. "A rave breaks out in Columbia," ESPN announcer Chris Fowler said as fans and players jumped up and down. "Sandstorm" played over the stadium speakers and whipped the crowd into a lather. With 1:39 left in the fourth quarter, and South Carolina leading 16-10, the Rebels faced a key third-and-12. But he has another go-to, an old pal from Finland: A 22-year-old instrumental track by a Finnish DJ named Darude.įor Beamer, who worked under Steve Spurrier at South Carolina from 2007-2010, "Sandstorm" has been a soundtrack for his rise in the coaching ranks, from the time he was a defensive assistant in Williams-Brice Stadium in 2009, when No. Sure, he probably calls his dad, Frank Beamer, the legendary former Virginia Tech coach. In need of a jolt of adrenaline? Looking for a steadying reminder of where it all started? A family rally to help land his dream job? He knows where to turn. New South Carolina coach Shane Beamer has been able to count on a reliable source of encouragement in some of the biggest moments of his career.
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