Why it’s too soon to put ‘Shane Beamer’ and ‘hot seat’ in the same sentence

South Carolina football is coming off a 5-7 season, the first under head coach Shane Beamer without a bowl game.

Ahead of Beamer’s fourth season leading the Gamecocks — USC is 20-18 overall in that tenure — his name has popped up here and there among “hot seat” chatter. CBS Sports’ Dennis Dodds’ annual hot seat rankings included Beamer in the “pressure is mounting” category.

We asked national writers, TV personalities and pundits at SEC Media Days about that chatter — Is Beamer really on the hot seat? — and here’s what they said:

Andy Staples, On3 Sports: I don’t know. If they’re terrible this year, then yeah, people are gonna be talking about that. But I don’t think they’re gonna be terrible. We’ve got people in our company who are very excited about LaNorris Sellers. They say that he could be a game-changing, dynamic-type quarterback. Now, will South Carolina name him the starting quarterback? Ehh, we’ll see. I mean, they have to send somebody out there in the first game. So I guess we’ll find out then.

Greg McElroy, ESPN/SEC Network: He’s not on the hot seat.

Ross Dellenger, Yahoo Sports: I wouldn’t think so. … For a place like South Carolina, you do have to look at the expectations and resource level compared to your schedule and your competition. I think consistently winning between seven and nine games should be celebrated out there. So, no, I don’t know that this is the year you would think he’s in any kind of trouble. But if they do struggle again this year, you obviously look at next year being a pretty substantial year.

Alyssa Lang, ESPN/SEC Network: I think it’s a little premature to be having that discussion at this point. Was last year disappointing? Yes. But no one’s more disappointed in five wins than Coach Beamer.

Josh Pate, 247Sports: This time last year — at this event last year — the talking point around South Carolina was, “Wow, they’ve overachieved relative to expectations for two years. What’s happening going into Year Three?” Well, two out of every three years, if you just extrapolate that out, overachieving relative to expectation, how is that not acceptable?

And then of course, I always believe if the noise gets louder the further away you get from the program, the less and less you listen to it. This is actually the case where, on the ground, people probably get it way more than someone in Birmingham or Dallas or Oklahoma City would.

Paul Finebaum, ESPN/SEC Network: I think anyone who says Shane Beamer is on the hot seat clearly has no understanding of South Carolina football. I’m mean, that is just a — and, by the way, I’m in that business — but it’s an absurd hot take that doesn’t correlate to reality. He’s done enough that fans like him and respect him. In eight days he won over the entire nation with those two wins (over Tennessee and Clemson in 2022). That’s reality. But, yeah, you can’t put two bad seasons together. It’s going to cost you.