How concerning are South Carolina’s penalties? It depends how you look at them

For a second, it felt like Shane Beamer was making an argument so brash it would upend how we thought about football. That for a hundred years, we’ve had it all wrong. Been playing the wrong game.

Penalties, Beamer kind of asserted, aren’t all that bad.

“Last season, the three most-penalized teams in the SEC had 31 wins between them,” Beamer said.

He’s right … kind of.

The most penalized team in the SEC last season was Tennessee (9-4), which committed 7.8 penalties per game (T-129 in the country).

But behind the Vols were three teams that were all flagged 7.2 times per game (T-112 in the country. They were Ole Miss (11-2) and Missouri (11-2) — clearly the schools Beamer was mentioning — and then South Carolina (5-7), which throws off the win average.

In 2024, penalties have again become a theme of this Gamecocks season, which drives Beamer mad. No team in the SEC averages more penalties than South Carolina (8.20). No team in the SEC loses more yards per game because of flags than the Gamecocks (72.2) — though Georgia and Alabama are close behind.

To the extent that you can pin down a defeat to a single issue, South Carolina lost to LSU because of penalties. Even in a blowout loss to Ole Miss last week, when nothing went right, penalty talk still dominated because the Gamecocks were flagged eight times for 80 yards … including four offsides penalties (all on third down) and Dylan Stewart notching a 15-yard flag for pretending to shoot the Ole Miss quarterback with a gun.

It’s like having a puppy that doesn’t stop peeing in the house. One time is an accident. Multiple times a month is a trend. And then how does one break the trend? Does it require more discipline? Better coaching? Is it the dog’s fault? Do you just have to live with the pain until it grows up?

There is clearly a problem.

“The penalties make me sick. But penalties are gonna happen,” Beamer said. “It’s the pre-snap penalties that make you want to throw up.”

In a sense, Beamer is arguing correlation does not equal causation. Fewer penalties do not equal more wins. If college kids don’t attend half their classes but still rack in A’s, is ditching class that big of a deal?

Last year’s national championship pitted Michigan (3 penalties per game) against Washington (7.5 penalties per game). The least-penalized squad in America against one of the most. There are many ways to skin a cat — you can win in spite of your mistakes and also win because you don’t make mistakes.

But let it be said: You must win.

Penalties become a moot point after victories. There were very few stories in Seattle last year about how the undefeated Washington Huskies were one of the most-flagged teams in the nation. This year, they’ve suffered two losses and, well, all of a sudden people care about the penalties.

Also, penalties are how we on the outside understand discipline. Fans and media love to extrapolate flags: What was happening during the week to cause the offsides? Heck, South Carolina linebacker Demetrius Knight Jr. does the same thing.

“Details are what gets you hurt,” he said. “If the locker room is dirty and we go out there and jump offsides a couple times, it’s gonna come back to those details. If the locker room is clean, we’re gonna play a clean game.

“How you do anything,” Knight added, “is how you do everything.”

If you follow that logic, then watch South Carolina commit the same silly pre-snap penalties week after week, you begin to question how the Gamecocks do “anything.” Is the locker room clean? Are the details understood?

And then you wonder if discipline is taught or instilled? Is it ingrained during summer workouts and preseason bonding, or can it be learned in the middle of the season?

Penalties are confounding because at the root, you are trying to determine why another human being did something — which leads down a speculation rabbit hole.

On the point the flags can determine success — yes, there are teams with enough talent to overcome the mistakes. Georgia has very similar penalty stats to South Carolina, but Georgia also has more talent than most of its opponents, so the flags aren’t as costly.

The Gamecocks, meanwhile, have little margin for error against any SEC team. Oftentimes, to win a conference game, South Carolina needs to play flawlessly — or be a bit lucky, like against Kentucky, when it fumbled three times and recovered all of them.

The Gamecocks aren’t good enough right now to beat themselves and still manage to beat the opponent — especially when it’s a talented Alabama team coming off an upset loss to Vanderbilt.

Ultimately, South Carolina’s penalties will be a concern until they’re not… or until the Gamecocks start winning.

SOUTH CAROLINA VS. ALABAMA GAME, TV INFO

Who: South Carolina (3-2, 1-2 SEC) vs. Alabama (4-1, 1-1 SEC)

Where: Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, Ala.

When: Noon Saturday

TV: ABC

Line: Alabama by 21