Shane Beamer shares moments he wishes were included in Netflix documentary

South Carolina was one of the nine SEC teams prominently featured in the new Netflix documentary series, SEC Football: Any Given Saturday, released last week. In fact, fifth-year Gamecocks head coach Shane Beamer is arguably one of the stars of the seven-episode docu-series that highlighted several top SEC storylines from the 2024 college football season.

Beamer and South Carolina were heavily featured in three of the episodes, including most notably in the fifth episode entitled “Football Family,” where Netflix cameras gave the viewer a more personal look at the real impact losses and the ensuing job speculation can have on a head coach’s family.

“Losing games is really, really hard,” Beamer said on the fifth episode. “But it’s harder seeing the sadness in your family’s face when you don’t win a game because you know they’ve got to deal with that for the next seven days.”

Later in the episode, Beamer recalls a personal experience he had as the son of legendary Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer, when a Blacksburg DMV employee allegedly confronted the then-16-year-old Shane while he applied for his driver’s licence.

“I’ll never forget the guy’s face,” Shane Beamer said. “I reached across the counter to get the ID and he hung onto it and looked me right in the eye and said: ‘If you want to keep this thing, you tell your dad he better win football games around here.'”

Of course, as with any documentary or television series, there are often plenty of filmed moments left on the cutting room floor. And while the Gamecocks certainly appreciated the extensive coverage of their program, Beamer recently acknowledged several behind-the-scenes moments that didn’t make it to air.

“There’s a lot. I think there’s so much content that they had. … I think they spent some time with some of our players outside the building, I know they went trick-or-treating with (defensive line coach) Travian Robinson and his kids on Halloween, and with some of the players as well that were out on Halloween. That didn’t make it,” Beamer said. “I think I told you guys they went to (my son) Hunter’s flag football practice, just stuff around the team. But specifically, (there’s) nothing that I can think of, I just know they had a lot of content that (didn’t make it). There were seven episodes, and we were featured in three of them, so there’s a lot of stuff that didn’t make it that certainly would’ve been good.

“But they did a great job, don’t get me wrong, and I know they had other teams they had to feature for sure.”

Along with South Carolina, SEC Football: Any Given Sunday also featured behind-the-scenes moments and interviews with fellow SEC programs like Auburn, Florida, Kentucky, LSU, Mississippi State, Tennessee, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt, with Commodores quarterback Diego Pavia also heavily featured.