by WILL FOLKS
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A week after college football experienced peak midseason upheaval, South Carolina decided to get in on the upset action by knocking off No. 11 Tennessee at home – the Gamecocks’ second consecutive victory over a ranked opponent.
South Carolina’s 27-24 victory over the Volunteers wasn’t pretty… with head coach Shane Beamer‘s team doing everything within its power to blow the game. Stupid penalties, uninventive play-calling, poor clock/game management and undisciplined losses of composure (ahem, Vicari Swain) nearly cost the Gamecocks their season-reframing win.
Luckily for Beamer, two things happened…
First, Tennessee played even sloppier… with penalties costing the Volunteers ninety yards (including three touchdown passes that came off the board).
Second, the Gamecocks (at long last) got game-changing plays at pivotal moments from their game-changing players… including a potentially season-reframing touchdown run from much-maligned starting quarterback LaNorris Sellers.
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Run of the Year. https://t.co/F8JnUTUk2J
— South Carolina Football (@GamecockFB) October 25, 2026
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Sellers’ Herculean individual effort capped an uneven afternoon in which he completed 18 of 32 passes (56.3%) for 210 yards with one touchdown and one (ugly) interception. The 6-foot-3, 238-pound senior from Florence, S.C. deftly displayed his dual-threat capabilities, though, rushing 18 times for 96 yards and a pair of scores – including his instantly legendary, gravity-defying, game-tying, awe-inspiring backward plunge into pay dirt with just 1:17 left on the clock.
The job wasn’t done, though. Despite Sellers’ heroics, Tennessee still had plenty of time to move into field goal range – something the Volunteers appeared on the cusp of doing after tailback Javin Gordon ran out of bounds at the Carolina 45-yard-line following a 17-yard scamper.
The run was called back for holding, though, leaving Tennessee roughly thirty yards out of kicker Cooper Ranvier‘s range – with forty seconds left on the clock. The Volunteers still seemed to hold the advantage, though… with ESPN’s matchup indicator giving them a 58.1% chance of victory even after the penalty.
Unfortunately for sixth-year head coach Josh Heupel‘s team, that’s when elite edge rusher Dylan Stewart – who earlier this season appeared on the verge of punching out of the program – took over the game.
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The strip-sack that set us up! @Dylan1Stewart_ x @TomiwaDurojaiye https://t.co/vhxcfy9m3C
— South Carolina Football (@GamecockFB) October 25, 2026
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Held in check most of the afternoon, Stewart unleashed the most bullish of bull rushes on right tackle Jesse Perry – bulldozing a path into Volunteer quarterback George MacIntyre. The sophomore signal-caller fumbled the football – his first turnover of the game – and proceeded to watch helplessly as the ball fell into the waiting arms of defensive lineman Tomiwa Durojaiye.
Four plays later, kicker Malik Orsan sealed the deal for South Carolina from 48 yards out… sparking the second straight field storm at Williams-Brice Stadium following an upset win over the Volunteers.
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GAMECOCKS WIN https://t.co/3KE5wxUnF1
— South Carolina Football (@GamecockFB) October 24, 2026
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The upset win improved Beamer’s record to 37-33 (.529) overall – with a 18-27 (.400) mark against conference opponents and an 9-23 (.281) record against ranked foes. It also further reduced the immediate temperature under the head coach’s seat coming on the heels of the Gamecocks’ rout over then-No. 16 Florida in The Swamp two weeks ago.
It’s ironic… at the very moment fans (and donors) were ready to run Beamer out of town on a rail, they had to confront the bitter reality that doing so would be cost prohibitive given his $28 million buyout.
Resigned to being stuck with Beamer for the foreseeable future… all of a sudden the Gamecock coach starts beating conference foes for the first time in over a year? And ranked opponents (back-to-back) for the first time since 2024?
While it seemed Beamer would use his post-game press conference to celebrate his team’s sudden momentum – and how to carry it forward into next week’s big conference road game against Oklahoma – his view was instead very much fixated on the rearview mirror.
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Beamer unloaded on Volunteer fans who claim former Michigan defensive coach Connor Stalions shared Tennessee’s offensive signals with Gamecock defensive coordinator Clayton White ahead of South Carolina’s 63-38 beatdown of the Volunteers four years ago.
White worked with former Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh from 2007-2009 at Stanford, and many Volunteer fans believe Stalions wanted to keep Tennessee’s high-octane offense out of the 2022 College Football Playoff.
Stalions has steadfastly denied the allegations.
“I have never had a discussion with SEC teams… I’ve had one discussion in my life with an SEC team regarding signals, and that was back in I believe 2019, when we played Alabama in the Citrus Bowl,” he said on a podcast ahead of last season. “I’ve never met anyone at South Carolina.”
“There was no trying to screw over Tennessee,” Stalions added. “I will also say this: if I had everything on a team, why would I not want to play them in the playoffs?”
Stalions did purchase a ticket to the Volunteers’ October 29, 2022 victory over Kentucky at Neyland Stadium – a seat positioned opposite Tennessee’s sideline with a clear view of its coaching staff – but he immediately transferred it to an associate. An NCAA investigation into Stalions’ sign-stealing scandal did not uncover any evidence of impropriety involving South Carolina.
Nonetheless, Beamer clearly had the matter fresh in his mind as he spoke at the podium on Saturday evening.
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?? #GamecockFootball @CoachSBeamer is riding high after another Top 20 upset victory for @GamecockFB… momentarily silencing his critics in Columbia, S.C. Ironic: at the very moment @UofSC and @GamecocksOnline realize they can’t afford to buy him out (and pay for a capable replacement), he starts winning a few conference games for the first time in over a year. Can Beamer keep #Cocktober momentum rolling into November? More importantly, can ge figure out how to win with a little magnanimity?
— FITSNews (@fitsnews) October 26, 2026
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“All the bullcrap conspiracy theories from the last four years, hopefully, we can put that crap to bed now,” he said. “I don’t even want to give credence to it and give oxygen to it because it’s so ridiculous. But it’s disrespectful. All these conspiracy theories about the 2022 game. It’s disrespectful to our fans that were in this stadium that night. It’s disrespectful to our players and coaches that scored 63 points against them that night and held them to 38.”
Despite being flanked by two of the game’s heroes – Sellers and Orsan – Beamer found it necessary to expound further on the subject, calling the allegations “embarrassing” while lamenting “all this credence that we’re still talking about this stuff four years later.”
“I don’t know what conspiracy theories they’re gonna come up with this year,” he continued. “Maybe it’s the lights from the State Fair or something affected their ability to play. I don’t know. But we won the football game in 2022 because we were the better team, so I hope we can put that crap to bed. And we won the game tonight because we were the better football team. So, hopefully, we can… you know… that can be our story.”
Curiously, it was Beamer’s own comments to the media – made three weeks prior to the 2022 Tennessee upset on November 1, 2022 – that sparked scrutiny of the rumored link to Stalions.
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“When we play opponents that we don’t play again, we usually try and connect with those coaches – see what you had on us and what we had on you,” Beamer said at a midweek press conference. “Non-conference teams, things like that. So we’ve done that often.”
Also worth recalling: Beamer was fined $25,000 in December 2016 for his role in the ‘Wakeyleaks scandal,” in which a former Wake Forest radio analyst named Tommy Elrod shared game planning information with coaches from several of the Demon Deacons’ upcoming opponents – including Virginia Tech, where Beamer was an assistant under his father from 2011-2015.
“While at Virginia Tech, I was contacted by Tommy Elrod the night before our game against Wake Forest in 2014,” Beamer said in a statement. “I had known him for several years through coaching circles so I did not think it unusual he would be calling me. During these communications, however, he told me about a few plays that he said Wake Forest might run during the game on Saturday … I realize I made a serious mistake in judgment by accepting the information and failing to notify officials at Virginia Tech of the communications. I sincerely apologize to Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, the ACC and the University of Georgia for my mistake. I am truly sorry.”
Beamer – who allegedly lied to a reporter about the scandal before it broke – insisted he “did not share this information with anyone, including our student-athletes, anyone on the coaching staff, or my father, nor did we use the information in the game.”
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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