The following was originally published on Oct. 28, 2024.

GamecockCentral.com’s Chris Clark recently sat down with former South Carolina athletics director Eric Hyman for a wide-ranging interview.

Here is a transcript of the hour-long-plus conversation. It has been edited for brevity and clarity.

GC: You recently returned to South Carolina. You were in town for the Ole Miss game. How was that? What did you think of the game, first of all?

HYMAN: Well, you know, I’m a big advocate of Shane Beamer. I met him when he was two years old with his dad, Frank Beamer.

In 2008, I was on the going-to-watch practice, and Gene Warr, who at the time, he may have been the deputy chair, at South Carolina. And so he asked me, he said, who would you choose if you were making the choice to replace Steve Spurrier? And I said, Shane Beamer.

Now, this is 2008. He said ‘why?’

Then I explained to him what I thought of him. Whether that had any traction, I don’t know. I think he had forwarded, when Will Muschamp was let go, forwarded Shane’s name to the powers to be.

I really think the world of Shane, and I’ve told people it’s gonna take them several years to turn, to get the program back. Unfortunately, you brought Texas and Oklahoma into the league and it’s just made it a little bit more difficult, and because they have a little more financial maneuverability than South Carolina. As you well know, the financial part of college athletics has really been elevated.

With that said, watching the game against Ole Miss, I was very disappointed. I wrote Greg Sankey, the commissioner, and just told him how despicable it was, the way that Ole Miss handled the injuries. I said it was gamesmanship at the worst level. I thought if college football wants to improve, we cannot go through something like that. And I said, there’s nobody in the business that is better prepared to handle that than you (Sankey). With the cross currents and the headwinds and everything that’s going on with college athletics, I know nobody better than Greg.

With that said, then I saw South Carolina play Alabama, and it was a difference of night and day. And I always had, no matter that South Carolina didn’t play as well as they wanted to play against Ole Miss, they did the antithesis of it against Alabama. Unfortunately, they came out on the short side. Their defensive line, their offensive line, who I happen to have a tendency to watch for a game, were just superb. And I was very proud of South Carolina. Of course, I’d like for them to have won, but I was very proud of the way they played. So it was great.

I had a chance to visit with people that I hadn’t seen in years. I went to some people that were very helpful to help move the program forward when I was there, and I made a point to go say thank you. It’s not about one person, it’s about a team. I’ve always used the expression, teammates make team members better. They’re part of the team. And they certainly helped make South Carolina better and elevated to where it has really improved and has a chance to be successful in all sports on an annual basis.

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GC: Do you typically go back once a year to South Carolina, or was that the first time in a while that you had been back?

HYMAN: No, I get invited back and I go once a year just to see things. I try to go back and it was fun to be able to go back and not take the spears and the shots to my back. But you know, I will say this, people really didn’t understand why I ended up having to do some of the things I did, but today they understand it. And it’s helped elevate, not totally, but it’s helped elevate South Carolina on a national basis and obviously in the SEC.

GC: You went to UNC. You were an assistant coach at Furman, went to school there, were an assistant football coach there, and kind of started your athletics administration career from there. Before you got to South Carolina,

you were the AD at TCU. And we’ll hit on a little bit of that shortly, but why did you decide to take the South Carolina job? You seem to have a pretty good gig going at TCU as well. Well, it’s an interesting story. Mike Slive called me, and Mike and I had a great connection and a great relationship. And he asked me to come to South Carolina. And there was the old push-pull theory. There was no push to leave TCU. Things were going well. Gary Patterson was having success. Jim Schlossnagle was having success, our baseball coach. To me, it was the challenge of the SEC. And so from what Mike was telling me, then I went to interview with Dr. Sorenson, and then one thing led to the next, and then I was hired to become the athletic director.

It was SEC, you know, you can be at a place too long, and maybe that’s my insecurities. Being at TCU, we had the program heading the right direction, great support, really liked Fort Worth, really liked the TCU people, but it was a challenge. It was a challenge in the SEC.

Obviously I was very familiar having worked at Furman, and I got my master’s there, worked there for 11 years, and going to school at North Carolina, I was very familiar with the University of South Carolina from the outside perspective. I didn’t know the internal workings.

Working with Steve Spurrier, I worked with 28 years as an athletic director, and people are surprised, but Steve was one of my favorites. I really, really liked working with him, and it was a great experience. It was fantastic for me. And then obviously the success that he had at South Carolina football was off the charts.

GC: Why was he one of your favorite people?

HYMAN: Because he knew, understood the chain of command, and he was very respectful to the position of athletic director. There some things that I needed him to do, and he did them without, – some head coaches might balk at doing it, but he didn’t, and he was realistic.

As a matter of fact, he was almost too realistic. When I got there, he had been with the Redskins, and he wasn’t that familiar with college athletics, wasn’t up to date with it. So was talking about, well, we have the facilities good enough to compete in the SEC, and here I’m out trying to tell people differently that we need some financial support to help elevate our facilities. So one day I came to him, and I said, Steve, I said, you’re killing me. I said it’s hard to raise money when you’re telling me that our facilities are good enough.

He went through the fall, that first fall, and he came to me, and he said, Eric, you’re right. I was wrong. I’d like to talk to the board, and then he went back to the board and expressed sort of the same sentiments I had, that there are things that we needed to do to help elevate South Carolina, the Gamecocks, athletically.

GC: One of those things that is tied in with that revenue raise that you needed, facility building that was so needed, was the new ticket initiative that you undertook. I know you’ve talked about this some over the years.

It was, at the time, very controversial. Maybe to some it still is, but you can kind of see some of the fruits of it now, right? At what point did you realize, this is bad, we have a lot to do, and that the whole decision of, hey, we’re going to have to raise ticket prices?

HYMAN: I went to the board, the Athletics Committee of the board, and I said, what do you want? You know, what do you want out of your athlete teams?

They said top 25 in the country. Well, financially, we are not in that position at all. When I took the job, they did tell me about the NCAA issue they had, but they did not tell me about the financial issue. Unfortunately, some of the money for the operating budget was coming out of deferred maintenance. I was blown away by how bad a situation South Carolina was, so I took about 15 different areas, and I listed them, and then where we were at South Carolina. Then I called every SEC AD, and I found out, and I talked to their business managers, where were we in relationship to the other SEC. That was our competition, but unfortunately, financially, we were not in a good position.

Whereas other SEC schools at that time were a little more generous towards athletics, South Carolina was not, and I think that was part of the reason the University of South Carolina was in a great financial position.

I’ll never forget it. One day we got $6 million from the SEC about a television initiative. $6 million, and I would give my teeth for it. And that might have helped where we didn’t have to do that comprehensive seat location or seat tax that we had to do.

Dr. Pastides and Rick Kelly and Marcy Girton, they asked me to come up and I talked and I thought the money was coming towards athletics. But when I got up there, I felt like I was a sheep among a bunch of wolves sharpening their knives and forks. And I was let down because we ended up, we got $3 million, which I was appreciative of, but we didn’t get the $6 million, which was targeted towards athletics. And that hurt us. So basically those kinds of things took place in South Carolina. We were not in a good financial position.

So going back to the aspirations of what the board wanted, we were so far behind financially. And so we ended up implementing. Herbert Adams was fantastic, who was the chair of the board at that time. There were some board members who were great and very supportive of what we were trying to accomplish. But unfortunately some of the people, I understand it.

I was at a baseball game at Sarge Frye Field and I got introduced, gave some presentation. I got booed and Ron Morris came up to me. Ron came up to me and said ‘what’s it like to be booed?’ I said well, I’ll tell you what, if I was in the stands, I’d be booing that guy too for what he had to do.

So I understood how people felt, even though I got, I was sued and those kinds of things. And we worked through all of that. But the fact of the matter is, we had to get out of our comfort zone if we wanted to be successful in the SEC. That’s the bottom line and in relationship to what other people had in the SEC to us. We were near the bottom from a financial standpoint. And that’s one of the reasons our facilities were so bad.

The Roundhouse was terrible. I mean, one day a snake came through. There were other animals or reptiles that came through in addition to that. Our academic learning center, we had holes in the wall and the ceilings. What we had to do, and a lot of people don’t know this, we had to cover our computers every night and we only had 14 computers. And now what do they have today? So you see where we started. A lot of people did not understand that. So, what we had to do to get the program head in the right direction, we had to do the things that you had mentioned.

I went back to the board and I said to them, you know, it’d be a lot easier if you want to be top 50 in the country across the board. And they said, no, no, no, no, no. Go back to be, you know, continue to be top 25, which is what we tried to do to accomplish. It was a challenge. It was a healthy challenge. There were some great people at South Carolina, which I really enjoyed. Going back to watch the game, I had the opportunity to talk to some people that were extremely supportive and I did that. And I just told them thank you.

GC: What were the characteristics that you saw in Shane Beamer, who at that point was an assistant and not been a coordinator, still pretty young in his career.

HYMAN: Well, he’s bright was one thing. He had compassion and he was respectful. Just the way he operated on the field. I mean, he was not a yeller and screamer or anything like that. There’s an expression, treat people how you want to be treated. He was very respectful to student-athletes. Obviously, he knew what he was doing, he was involved mostly with special teams. I watched him coaching and he just left an indelible mark with me. Those are the things I try to do in my job.

Dawn Staley is another example. You know, you try to look at the waterfront and in your mind, when you see something that’s appealing, you try to remember and have a track record or keep in touch with them. Shane was great about that kind of stuff. I really respect him and think the world of him. He’s a quality person, South Carolina people just have to give him some time, which it’s not a great virtue of fans now.

GC: Let’s keep it on Spurrier. I know you weren’t at South Carolina at the time, but just watching from afar, what did you think of him hanging it up midseason in 2015?

HYMAN: I wasn’t there, so I’m going to give you my thoughts from afar. My understanding, if this is correct, he did not want to come back that year. And he was talked out of it by his AD and by his wife and his heart wasn’t in it. And as the season progressed, it became more and more obvious. And that’s why he ended up hanging it up. Would? I want somebody to hang it up in the middle of season? I would prefer not. I would prefer them to wait until the end of the year. I guess it made such a impact on him, he was not effective in his coaching to the extent that he had been in the past. So he just said this is time to move on. The timing was not good. He felt if he would have stayed there, things may have gotten worse. I’m only giving conjecture on my part.

GC: Spurrier was at South Carolina from 2005 until the middle of the season in 2015. During that time period, it was the school’s only SEC title game appearance in 2010. They had a 33-6 record from 2011 to 2013. That’s really the golden ages of South Carolina football.

This is another ‘from afar’ question, but in your mind, what is the likelihood that USC can find that level of success it was having under Steve Spurrier without a coach named Steve Spurrier?

HYMAN: Well, that’s a good question. And as I alluded to earlier, bringing in Texas and Oklahoma just makes the job more difficult because of the financial resources that they have. South Carolina has got great people. They’re fantastic people. I loved working with them, but they’re not in the financial position that say Alabama or Ole Miss or Louisiana, with the petrodollars. And that makes a huge difference.

Having been at A&M and very familiar with Texas, that’s going to make the South Carolina job difficult. And so people need to understand that. Shane’s capable of, you’re not going to be probably as, I don’t know, this is just my part and I may be totally wrong. I don’t know if anybody’s going to be as consistent as Steve was for five years. I mean, he had a heck of a run. It’s more difficult today than it was when Steve was here. So, based on that they have a lot of challenges going forward. Can they be successful? Yeah, they can be successful. But, I’ve always said you’ve got to work hard and put yourself in a position where luck is a factor. If you haven’t worked hard and you get some luck, it’s not going to impact you as much. So you’ve got to be in a position.

Let’s face it, what impressed me about South Carolina against Alabama was the depth that they had. I didn’t notice that against Ole Miss, but you see the differential part that separates South Carolina and other schools in the SEC is the depth. Will they ever have the same depth as Alabama? Probably not.

You’ve got to be fortunate. Many years ago, Duke went through their football season a long time ago and they won eight games. They never done that before. Why did they win eight games? Because they got no injuries. Unfortunately, got some injuries and lost a couple of the last games. But the fact of the matter is luck has got to help you some.

GC: Sounds like the Spurrier quote, give fate a chance. I think that’s something he liked to say a lot.

HYMAN: Incidentally, he does not shoot from his hip. He’s very smart. He’s very methodical. He knows what he’s saying and he knows what he’s doing. People don’t believe that. But that’s the truth about him.

GC: I had one of his assistants told me a story that they went into. Ellis Johnson told me a story that when he first got hired, he was trying to get Steve Spurrier to give him the schedule of when are we going to work on goal line? When are we working in the red zone?

And Steve said, we’ll work on it when we work on it and just kind of dismissed him. But then when they got out to practice, there was a plan and Ellis had gotten the GAs to pull up the past. And it was down to the exac, to your point, it was all just in his head. And there was kind of a method to it.

HYMAN: The thing about Steve, Steve can tell you when he was, I’m just using examples – he’s head coach at Duke and were playing NC State and it was third down on State’s 20 yard line and he ran X play.

Or he can tell you that he was playing on playing golf on X golf course, and it was a par three. He can tell you what club he used and how close he was and whether he got a birdie or a par or whatever. But he can’t remember Jerri’s birthday.

He’s got an uncanny memory. I mean, it’s unbelievable. For certain things.

GC: Let’s let’s talk about basketball a little bit, start on the men’s side. You had to figure I was going to ask you about this. Another thing that people always talk about was Dave Odom, the war chest of credibility comment.

HYMAN: That was one of my favorite sayings. We all have a war chest of credibility, and that’s the truth. And we make deposits or withdrawals in it in life. And when there’s nothing left, then you’re at a point that maybe a decision or direction needs to go a little bit differently. People may not like it, but I liked it.

GC: So there was a point where you had to make a decision, maybe there was some pressure to move on from Dave Odom and you decided to bring him back.

And then at one point there was that the decision where you were hiring a new basketball coach. Can you talk about maybe that those last couple of years, the end of the Dave Odom era? And then obviously we’ll get into the search that led to the next coach.

HYMAN: The search, the reason for Dave, and Dave’s a nice guy. He’s a great guy, a real quality person. His wife is delightful. It was time to maybe take the program in a different direction. Personally, like Dave. I liked him a lot and I liked his wife a lot.

Ultimately an athlete director has got to make a decision on what’s in the best interest of the university and the athletic department. I felt at that time that’s what I had to do.

Was it a moment that I love? No. When you let a coach go, it’s it’s really bothersome to me. It’s a personal thing for me because it impacts so many other people. And so you want to make sure you’re making the right decision.

GC: When you hired Darrin Horn, you know, he really seemed to check a lot of boxes. Had just made a run, I think, into the Sweet 16. Young, energetic, played an exciting style. What was it about Darrin Horn that attracted you to him for that position at that time?

HYMAN: Well, I did enough research on him, and that’s what I’ve always done. And I’ll never forget somebody in the media talked to several of the athletic directors about a search firm. I never used a search firm. Now I had an individual out there that might help me do a little research, background, and all that. In the job, I’ve known enough people around the country. And so I called people that I trust and they were very high on Darrin.

And Darrin, he he might be one of the brightest coaches I’ve ever been around. Extremely bright. I still stay in touch with him today. He might tell you that he probably wasn’t ready for it in the SEC from a from a maturity standpoint, having to deal with the challenges that you have to deal. I would hire him in a heartbeat today because I think he’s that good.

He was extremely intelligent and he did a lot of good things. One of our best players tore his knee up. That’s that part about being lucky. He was our best basketball player. Unfortunately, losing somebody like him hurt us dramatically and it impacted the team, to be fair.

GC: The the other hire that was made in that year was Dawn Staley, who is still here and not sure if you’ve kept up, but she’s doing pretty well at South Carolina.

I have seen some material that’s come out actually kind of recently and some back in 2008 that I went over before you and I got on here to chat. And there were a few coaches that you had talked to. I remember Wes Moore, who was then at Chattanooga, Holly Warlick, Sylvia Hatchell. But my understanding is Dawn kind of came up a little later in the process.

HYMAN: Not really. Tom Cross was her agent. You have to go back and I’ve tried to explain to people. Like I said to you, you keep your eyes and ears open.

When I was at NC State, we played Virginia in women’s basketball and there was a little point guard for Virginia. I don’t know what her name was. She really impressed me. She stood out. Well, I went and research and I went back to find out who was was Dawn Staley.

I said, boy, she’s competitive. And then when I was at TCU, we played Temple in women’s basketball in the regionals and we beat them. But I was very impressed that Dawn could recruit to Temple. Not to be disparaging remarks, but Temple’s in a very difficult part of Philadelphia.

So when Dawn came down, I just never connected with her. And I want to connect with a coach to the extent that I want to connect. I think she was very guarded, extremely guarded during that whole process.

When she left, Marcy Girton, who is a saint, who is basically my right hand person and then several as Kevin O’Connell and Charles Waddell, she and I sat down. We talked about it.

I’ll never forget it. We were in my living room discussing what’s our next step. And she was encouraging that, we need to follow up on Dawn. Well, the thing that supported what she was saying, and I’ll never forget this: Dawn carried the American flag at the Olympics. To me, that’s this prestigious thing or honor that you can have. That’s what sold me. I need to go back up to Dawn, and I need to go on her turf.

So I flew on up there and went on her turf. And it was really, really fascinating. She showed me where she had grown up, which is a tough area. We were going to go have lunch together at a place downtown in Philadelphia. When we walked in, it was packed. There was no place for us. We went back across the street and we talked about where we should go, Starbucks, which was down the street. We walked down there. Everybody came up, ‘Dawn, how are you doing?’ Hugged her and all that kind of stuff. That left an indelible mark with me. Everybody.

I exaggerate a little bit, but I couldn’t get two words in Starbucks. Everybody came up and talked to her. There was a huge connection with the community. A columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote a column and he said, ‘Dawn, don’t leave us.’ That was pretty impressive.

So we ended up hiring Dawn. And there was pushback. I’ll just be honest with you, for some of the board members. We ended up having to pay her a salary that was very high for women’s basketball back then. But I felt and I said this to them, she’ll have more of an impact off the court than she will on the court.

Now, this is a long time ago, 2008, or whenever it was: she’ll have more of an impact off the court, which I think that’s happened. You had to beg people to go to women’s basketball games back then. Now, I don’t think that’s so. And I really attribute a lot to Dawn, the kind of character and the kind of person she is.

I think the world of her. I just think she’s done a marvelous job. I’m so excited for South Carolina, because she’s helped put South Carolina athletics on the map and the University of South Carolina.

When you say Dawn Staley, what do you think of? The University of South Carolina.

GC: Winning in any sport in college athletics is hard. Winning championships, I should say, is extremely difficult. And even for someone like with Dawn’s pedigree, and her resume, that was very impressive.

I mean, coaching and playing in the WNBA at the same time, etc. I know you thought she would be successful when you hired her. And as you said, have a bigger impact even off the court. But did you think she would be this dominant, this successful?

HYMAN: I don’t think anybody could. I’d like to be able to tell you, yeah, sure, knew it all along.

Not at all. But I knew she could accomplish a lot at South Carolina because of just who she was and the kind of notoriety she brought, the kind of person she was. All those from a women’s basketball standpoint, the respect that she had across the country. Yeah. Did I know she’d win the championships to the extent – no, not really.

I felt that she could battle for championships and I think she’s done that and won them.

GC: Let’s go back to men’s basketball. So you mentioned earlier the second coach, men’s basketball coach I wanted to ask about, and that was Frank Martin, who obviously ended up finding a lot of success here at South Carolina.

What’s the backstory on how you were able to hire him from Kansas State?

HYMAN: Well, again, that’s one of those things I talk to people in the business and they’re very complimentary of him. And there’s a person,I don’t want to say, but I really respect him. And he gave me some great insights about Frank.

Frank is, strategically, he’s a hell of a coach. To go to the Final Four the way he did with the talent that he had, beating Duke in the regional finals. I mean, it says a lot about Frank and his basketball knowledge and what he did and what he accomplished at Kansas State.

GC: I feel like there was some surprise that, here’s a guy at Kansas State and he’s coming to South Carolina. And you’ve got to remember at that time, the perception around the South Carolina basketball program was the SEC wasn’t what it is now. It’s become a stronger league. I think we could say in the last several years, some of the coaches that are in it, did you feel like that was a pretty big coup at the time to be able to land him?

HYMAN: I just fooled him. That’s all there is to it. No, I thought Frank was very well known nationally and to be able to pull it off.

I could write a book about how to keep it confidential. I mean, I did everything I possibly could. I didn’t want to tip the hat. I didn’t want people to say something about Frank publicly or somebody see him or take a picture of him or whatever and that ruin our chances to get him.

I think it’s a reflection of South Carolina. And I think it’s a reflection of the people in the athletic department, why we were able to achieve and to be able to hire somebody of that stature and quality.

GC: Maybe you will write a book about this, but anything you had to do to be very secretive during a coaching search that you can share, ay of your methods?

HYMAN: I knew how nosy the media was. When we went to get the school plan, I would park in the hangar, which I don’t normally do, so people would not see my car.

Those are the kinds of things that I would try to do. Brought him in under the cloak of darkness. And somebody, I think spotted him. They weren’t really sure because in the car that he was in, it was hard to see him. It was hard to get a sense for him.

Those are the kinds of things I try to do is get the plane where people wouldn’t track us. They were tracking me. If I made a right hand turn, they were aware of it. So I just tried to be real low profile, low key.

A thing I did, one thing to the media, is that I said Al Daniel – former basketball player, drafted by the San Antonio Spurs – I’ve known Al since he was at Furman. So I said that Al and and I were going to be conducting this search. He was going to help me. He didn’t help me. He was out there. So the media went to him as opposed to me. They thought they could get information from him and follow him or watch him. It allowed me a little more flexibility, a little more freedom to do some of the things I had to do. So it was plot to distract people and to get them on the path of, or aware of, Al where I could sort of be a little incognito.

GC: You mentioned some of the qualities of Shane Beamer, to go back to that story that you mentioned when he was an assistant in 2008 on the sideline, you thought he was a head coach.

You’ve hired Dawn Staley. You hired Frank Martin, Gary Patterson, Jim Schlossnagle. What do you look for in a coach when you’re hiring a coach?

HYMAN: There are three things I look for. Honesty (integrity), work ethic – hard worker – and somebody that’s smart. Intelligence. Those are the three things. And then on top of that, experience, it wasn’t as important to me, maybe as some other people. Because if you hire bright people, they can make up for maybe the experience that they don’t have that maybe some other people have.

I’ve done tons of research on people. As a matter of fact, when I hired Dennis Franchione at TCU, he was in New Mexico. I had the director of sports medicine, who was a friend of mine at NC State, contact the director of sports medicine in New Mexico.

There’s no connection to me. His name was Charlie Rozanski. I gave Charlie the questions I wanted him to ask the director of sports medicine at New Mexico, because I want to know what was Fran like behind the scenes. Who better to ask than the trainer?

And what Charlie said to the trainer was he was doing a survey, but he didn’t tell him it was a one-person survey. And so he got the answers that I needed and to justify the reason for hiring. The director of sports medicine, the strength coach and the director of sports medicine know the head coaches real well, inside out. And so Charlie was able to help me to give me that kind of insight to help me in the decision-making process.

So what I’m trying to say to you, I tried to do a lot in the profession. There’s people I trust and people I didn’t trust as far as giving me recommendations and I do enough due diligence to find out what’s the real person like behind the closed doors.

GC: You also were able to be around Ray Tanner when he was in the dugout and ultimately he succeeded you as AD at South Carolina. Ray was obviously a great coach as well. How was it working with him? What did you see from him as a coach first and foremost?

HYMAN: Well, he’s probably one of the best baseball coaches I’ve ever seen, and he did a hell of a job with baseball. I look back at my professional career and his accomplishments by winning two world series is, you know, comparable to some of the other things that some of the programs have been able to achieve.

And I really respected him for that. We didn’t spend a lot of time together, I’ll put it that way. Some coaches do, some coaches don’t. And I sort of try to take the lead from the coach, because I don’t want to, having been a former coach, I don’t want to be in micromanaging a program. I’ll make suggestions and those kind of things. But I try to be very, being a former coach, I try to be very guarded by what I say, how I say, and how I deal with coaches.

GC: You referenced earlier, one of the things that you knew and one of the things you didn’t know before you got to South Carolina.

So the NCAA investigation, now that that’s passed, I believe the NCAA commended South Carolina for the way they handled that. Anything you can say about just having gone through that, and how that was trying to shepherd the program through that process?

HYMAN: I mean, if I was a student-athlete, would I take the opportunity to go to an apartment for free? So, I mean, times have changed, but back then it wasn’t.

But the most fascinating story about that experience, having gone through it, we had a defensive tackle named Ladi Ajiboye. And Ladi Ajiboye was from College Park, which is not a very good part of Atlanta.

So how does a young person get through those, the parts of the city that are not the best in the world? Well, there’s certain things that they learn to be able to cope and be able to handle it. And Ladi fell into that category. Well, anyway, the NCAA investigators came in and they investigated the case. And Ladi was not up front with the investigators.

Now, Brad Lawing, who was a defensive line coach, had me, because that was the position I played in college, he had me work with Ladi a little bit. I got to know him as a person, and I had him over to the house for dinner and that kind of stuff, which you could do back then.

So Ladi, they wanted to really penalize him badly because he was lying. He wasn’t upfront. And so I told Ladi afterwards, because I developed a relationship, I went to David Price, who was the chair of the NCAA enforcement, the CEO of that or whatever the proper terminology is. So I called Dave and I said, Dave, we’re in the business of young people. And I know Ladi Ajiboye. I said I would like to give him a second chance.

You have to understand the circumstances, how he was brought up, where he was brought up, and how he was able to survive. And so he did, and the investigators did not want to give him a second chance, did not want to re-interview him.

Well, David ended up doing it. And he told the investigators, I want you to re-interview Ladi. So now we fast forward. Before his interview, I came up to Ladi because I knew Ladi. I said, Ladi, you’ve got a second chance. You better be up front. You better be honest. But if you’re not, I’m going to do a rain dance on your head. I’m coming after you. But I want you to go in there and be honest with him. Well, he came back, he was honest with him, up front. He cried. He was a big ol’ defensive tackle. He was the captain of the team, I think, the next year. And they really changed their feelings about him.

You better be honest. But if you’re not, I’m going to do a rain dance on your head. I’m coming after you. And, but I want you to go in there and be honest with him. Well, he came back, he was, he was honest with him up front. He cried.

Fast forward on October 9, 2010, we played Alabama and beat them. At the end of the game, I don’t normally do this, but I was like a kid in a candy store. I was so excited. We beat Alabama. We were number one in the country. I was fit to be tied.

I don’t normally do this kind of stuff, but I went on the sidelines. I was dancing. I was having fun. Well, some guy comes up in his pads and puts his arm around me and says, Mr. Hyman, thank you for my second chance. And see, that about brought tears to my eyes. I still get emotional on that. So it was a second chance for him. And then as we fast forward, he got his degree at the end of the fall semester. I was standing there waiting with him to give him a hug after he got his degree and get a picture taken of the two of us.

That to me is what college athletics is supposed to be, is be a difference maker in a young person’s life. Now that’s something I haven’t told, I haven’t broadcast or anything like that.

So now we fast forward while Ladi was doing an internship with, I think it was Waffle House. I brought the management team over and I made him wait on us and it was fun. At the end I slipped him a tip, he eligibility was over with, I slipped him a sizable tip. Just sort of my way of saying thank you.

To me, that was one of the most exhilarating moments I had at South Carolina was beating Alabama and beating the number one team in the country.

GC: you left South Carolina to go to Texas A&M. What went into that decision?

HYMAN: Well, I have kids that went to TCU when I was the athletic director there. My daughter-in-law and my son-in-law, they all lived in Texas. And my sister went to A&M, I had a niece that went to A&M, my son-in-law went to A&M. And quite frankly, on the surface, I thought it was a great fit.

And again, Mike Slive and Chuck Gerber. They were coming to the SEC. They wanted somebody to help make the transition in. So they knew my Texas background. They asked me if I would do it. So we had numerous conversations and that’s what led me to Texas A&M.

Kids, grandchildren and I think a grandchild on the way. So, having the grandchildren and, you know, I’ve always said about grandchildren, I didn’t have a lot of time with my children growing up. And I stole this saying from Stan Juk, who’s a cardiologist in South Carolina, his second chance was his grandchildren. Well, this is my second chance was with my grandchildren because I just did not have a lot of time. And I’ve loved every minute of it.

Texas A&M had a challenge and I’m not going to go into a lot of details. Let me just say overall, the Aggies were fantastic. I mean, absolutely fantastic. I loved them. There’s one or two that my values were just misaligned with them and I could go into stories but I really don’t want to do that.

My values were misaligned and I was not and I thought I was a great fit like a round peg and a round hole. But after spending a couple of years there, then I felt like I wasn’t a good fit. It may have just been may.

The people were very generous financially. It’s off the charts. You saw they paid Jimbo Fisher, what, $70 million or whatever, which just blows my mind. We couldn’t squeeze blood out of a turnip financially at South Carolina when I first got there. And now A&M throws 70 some million dollars to let a coach go. It’s just a different world. It’s just a different mindset, a different thought process, a different exposure.

There were some good, there were some great people on the board and there were some that were a challenge.

GC: The job of an AD seems to have changed even since you were in the chair, right? NIL is one of the big things we’ve got, revenue sharing rapidly approaching as litigation’s pending. How do you think the job in 2024 and beyond has changed from when you were at Texas A&M at South Carolina, at TCU?

HYMAN: Well, it’s changed in so many ways. I can’t begin to tell you, but I’ll say this. I’ve talked to different groups. I say I don’t like what’s happening, but I understand it.

When you’re paying coaches 10 million, 11 million, 12 million, and they can leave or whatever, off the backs of whom? The players. The athletes. And I don’t like it, because of the academic component, which is very important to me, because there is life after sports. And to put so much emphasis on football or different sports, because they need it now. They need the revenue. They’ve committed themselves to do some of the building and some of the other phases that they’re trying to accomplish. I probably wouldn’t be a good fit today. And that’s just fine. My blood pressure has gone way down. I’m a normal human being. At least I think I am.

I would struggle with some of the things that are going on. I understand it. I just don’t like it. It’s a very difficult job for an AD today.

I said this, and somebody at A&M got their nose bent out of shape: the board or a president or whatever, they micromanage your activities and they hold you accountable for the results, which is very, very difficult. Then when things go south, they’re so far behind you, you need binoculars to find them. That’s just the reality of it.

A vice president for ESPN told me one day years later, after I left TCU, that’s one of the best stories in college athletics they had, being 1-10 in football, going all the way to the national championship game. And the reason why was because of the alignment of the school. The school is aligned properly. It’s what’s right for TCU, at least when I was there, not what’s right for the board member. Or you know, I want this or I want that. It’s what’s right for the university and they put the university first. That’s one of the reasons why TCU has been successful throughout the years, the leadership they’ve had at the top. And then the board is in sync and the athletic department is not out of whack and is not out of step with everybody, with everything else that the university is trying to accomplish.

GC: Throughout your career, is there anything that you can think of that you regret or wish hat you had a do over on?

HYMAN: You got a couple hours? I mean, there’s a lot of things that, if I look back with 20/20 hindsight, people didn’t understand it.

But do you remember we went to the NIT one year?

People didn’t understand how bad a shape we were and they didn’t understand. And I kept saying, and I got no traction with people. So we sent the pep band, a few people, the pep band and a couple of cheerleaders or whatever. I don’t remember what it was.

I mean, should I have done that? Maybe not. But I had to get the attention of people. Because we were not, I was not getting any attention and we were just drowning because of lack of funding. When I got there, we were $5 million in the red or $2 million, $2.5 million. This is way back. So what 5 million or 2.5 million back then is today is much larger.

So I went to the CFO and said, well, how are we doing? And I was nervous. I’m more of a budget person. I’m sensitive to budgets. And he told me that, oh, we’ll be fine. We’ll make it up.

Well, then we fast forward in the fall, late in the fall. And that’s when I did that survey of the other programs in the SEC. We weren’t making it up. We were losing another 2.5 million.

And so I did things like that. Maybe I could have done it a different way. I mean, I made a lot of mistakes and I’ve got erasers on all my pencils. The key was to learn from them. As you go through, yeah, there are things that I did I wish I had maybe done a little bit differently.

GC: I don’t know how much you want to talk about this, to be frank. But speaking of one of the second chances, somebody who got a lot of chances, Stephen Garcia was one of the student-athletes at South Carolina. He was ultimately dismissed from the program. Any reflections on that process or how all that came about?

HYMAN: Well, I’ve got reflections. To be frank with you, so much stuff that came out that was not true.

It was very important to me when I first got there – we didn’t have it – what’s the number one thing you’ve got to be able to do to be successful academically in college?

It’s not your SAT score. It’s not your ACT score. It’s not your class rank. It’s not the high school you went to. What is it? It’s going to class. And I mean, I can tell you a story about Jadeveon Clowney about that.

Today, I don’t know that it would be acceptable, but you’ve got to go to class. And so we have some issues with Stephen about that.

We had a couple other issues with him. And so the SEC came in and made a presentation. They did not want to have any adults there from South Carolina, connected with South Carolina. So they came in and did a seminar or whatever.

Well, Stephen was drunk. And he caused a lot of problems. Mike Slive called me very, very upset. The bottom line is that’s a straw that broke the camel’s back. If you’re going to have discipline, you’ve got to live within the discipline of today. Your discipline is a little bit wider. Give the kids a little more room to, some of the challenges, things they’ve got to do, but you just got to a point where enough is enough.

The bad thing about all that is some guy wrote a column about my wife. And how my wife was the cause of this. To be frank with you, my wife had a nine hour back operation. She couldn’t even stand up. She was in a brace. She couldn’t teach, she couldn’t do anything. And she did our life skills progrma. So that was so false, such a big lie about what took place. It bothered her badly that somebody would say something like that. She wasn’t, I think, even in South Carolina at the time. She may have been in Texas where she was operated on. So those kind of things you’ve got to deal with unfortunately.

So you look back on the Stephen Garcia thing, it’s just, I wish I didn’t have to do it.

Here’s the way I operate. I try to do what was the right thing. And I try to make the main thing, the main thing, and that’s your student-athletes. Sure, I was second-guessed. A bunch of times.

GC: I asked you about your regrets, so I think it’s only fair to ask you what you’re most proud of or what you may consider your biggest accomplishment or accomplishments throughout your administrative career.

HYMAN: We did a life skills program at South Carolina. We did it at A&M. We did it long before the NCAA asked you to do it because I thought it was very important to give our student athletes the tools to be successful.

This is a small thing. I was in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport and a student-athlete came up to me, a female, and she’s a volleyball player in South Carolina. She came up to me and said, weren’t you my AD at South Carolina? I said well, I was the AD at South Carolina.

She says, I want you to know I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but the life skills program you did for us helped me dramatically, and I want to tell you thank you.

See, that’s a little thing, but those are the kind of little things which is a reflection that maybe I’m doing some right things. Contrary to what some people may feel, maybe I’m doing some right things.

There are a lot of things like that that have taken place in my professional career that you just try to be a difference maker in a young person’s life.

And with the staff, I was very fortunate to have great people like Marcy and Charles and Kevin O’Connell and Jeff Tallant. And another one was Jeff Crane. Jeff Crane was off the charts. I mean, he was so good, but he was a rising star. So, we had good people. It wasn’t all about me. It was abou the people that we worked with, and they got me out of the ditch many times.

GC: You spoke earlier to the difficulty of winning, and particularly with Texas and Oklahoma coming into the SEC. We’re seeing a lot of parity in athletics and college football. But going through that experience at South Carolina, you’ve been in that chair. You’ve been in the A&M chair, at TCU. Is there anything structural that hinders South Carolina from having more success, particularly in football, whether it’s political involvement, the way that something’s set up, anything that you see there that says, I feel like this is really holding this place back?

HYMAN: No. I mean, there are just some things that will never change. I mean, how many people live in the state of Texas? How many people live in the state of South Carolina? That’s not a kiss of death. It just makes things a little bit more challenging. That’s a structural thing. I don’t think you’d ever see that. That’s not going to change the population.

I mean, South Carolina’s growing. To me, the state of South Carolina was one of the best-known secrets that I knew of, especially in the Congaree River, which goes right down Columbia, and some things like that, that really sort of separates. And I think people are beginning to find out how great a state South Carolina is.

One of the other things is the financial flexibility that the state has. It’s gotten better, but it’s still a challenge to who you’re competing against.

Go back to the first thing I was saying, you know, so how is Steve (Spurrier) successful? We went into Georgia, and he went into Florida, and he got some of the seconds and thirds. And he turned out a great product. Well, Gary Patterson did the same thing at TCU. He didn’t win any battles against A&M and Texas and those kinds of things.

So what he did, he projected, he could project talent. Well, Steve could do the same thing. And so even though that’s a challenge, that’s a hurdle, but it’s not a hurdle that you can’t overcome from a structural standpoint.

South Carolina added yet another member to it’s OL room today with the addition of WKU Transfer Rodney Newsom Jr. He joined WKU last off-season after spending a year at Itawamba Community College after initially signing with Memphis out of high school.

Newsom Jr. played in 14 games for the Hilltoppers in 2024, and should still have at least 2 years of eligibility remaining. He originally attended Briarcrest Christian High School in Memphis and he even got some early attention from fellow SEC foe Tennessee.

In this portal cycle, Newsom heard a lot from Arkansas and Mississippi State, but the Gamecocks were able to get him over the finish line, where he joins fellow transfer Nick Sharpe as important depth pieces for an OL filled with several good high school recruiting classes, but yet to fully realize all of that potential.

With those two adds, it’s still possible the Gamecocks will kick the tires at Center before the cycle is over, but still should feel much better about it’s depth with two additions that have logged some quality snaps at the college level.

South Carolina continues to bolster its offensive line depth, as former Western Kentucky guard Rodney Newsom is expected to transfer to the Gamecocks

Newsom, who was one of the top-performing interior offensive linemen in Conference USA this season, brings experience and proven ability to the South Carolina offensive line unit. According to Pro Football Focus (PFF), Newsom earned the fourth-highest grade among all Conference USA guards in 2023 and boasted the second-highest pass-blocking grade in the conference.

Standing out with his versatility and ability to protect the quarterback, Newsom’s addition is a significant move for South Carolina as they aim to strengthen their trenches ahead of next season.

Newsom’s impact was also recognized nationally. On3 Sports recently ranked him as one of the top 10 interior offensive linemen in the transfer portal, citing his consistency, technical skill, and high ceiling.

South Carolina’s offensive line has faced challenges in recent years, but the Gamecocks have prioritized recruiting and transfer portal additions to shore up the position. With Newsom expected to join the program, he could compete for a starting role immediately and provide veteran leadership to a young and developing offensive line group.

This move also highlights South Carolina’s ability to recruit high-caliber talent from the portal, especially players who excel in specific areas like pass protection. Head coach Shane Beamer and his staff continue to address critical needs, ensuring that the team has the depth and talent necessary to compete in the SEC.

With his experience at Western Kentucky and a proven track record, Newsom has the tools to make an immediate impact in Columbia.

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