South Carolina’s Shane Beamer calls for ‘hostile, hostile, hostile’ home crowd vs Florida

COLUMBIA — South Carolina football coach Shane Beamer didn’t mince words on his radio call-in show Thursday when describing the atmosphere he’s hoping for when Florida comes to Williams-Brice Stadium. In fact, it only took him one word — re-emphasized five times.

“They’ve had struggles away from home, and they’ll be the first to tell you that. We certainly don’t need Columbia, South Carolina and Williams-Brice Stadium to be a place where any team goes to get right,” Beamer said. “We need to make this a hostile, hostile, hostile, hostile, hostile environment on Saturday.”

The Gamecocks (2-3, 1-2 SEC) host the Gators (4-2, 2-1) for their homecoming game on Saturday (3:30 p.m., SEC Network), and Beamer said tickets to the game sold out even before a kickoff time was announced last week. Florida has won just one road SEC game since Billy Napier took over the program in 2022-23, and South Carolina is 6-2 at home against conference opponents since Beamer was hired in 2021.

The Gamecocks are also expecting a significant slate of recruits in attendance, including four-star 2024 athlete Jalewis Solomon and four-star 2025 tackle Jaylen Gilchrist.

“It’ll be a rocking environment, and from a recruiting standpoint 3:30 is the perfect start time. We’ve got kids coming from Ohio, Tennessee, Florida, New Jersey,” Beamer said. “It’s a star-studded group of high school prospects that are going to be at this game on Saturday, and the number of people that we’ll have here from a recruiting standpoint, to me, is a testament about everything that we are doing in this program and how that resonates with prospects.”

South Carolina looks to avenge an embarrassing 38-6 loss to Florida at the Swamp in 2022. The Gamecocks offense was shut out, with the team’s only points coming from a fake punt that Kai Kroeger threw 48 yards to Dakereon Joyner for a touchdown.

Florida leads the all-time series with South Carolina 30-10-3, but the SEC East matchup has been more balanced in recent years, with the Gamecocks winning four of the past 10 meetings. Eight of South Carolina’s 10 wins in the history of the series have come at Williams-Brice Stadium, and Florida has lost in three of its past five trips to Columbia.

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