With the expansion of the College Football Playoffs, bowl games have seemingly never meant less. But the expanded playoffs didn’t lessen the fire or emotion in the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl matchup between South Carolina and Illinois.
In fact, South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer erupted in anger and was held back by multiple coaches after Illinois head coach Bret Bielema taunted him.
An Illinois player was down injured near the South Carolina sideline. Bielema came to check on him and as he was walking back to the Illinois sideline, he stretched his arms straight out straight. The fourth-year South Carolina head coach erupted.
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To that point in the game, Illinois had been subbing extremely slowly on defense after South Carolina subbed. It kept South Carolina from playing with tempo and forced them to take timeouts or snap the ball late in the play clock. Beamer was visibly irritated at different points in the game when Illinois subbed late before his outburst at Bielema’s motion.
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While it originally looked like Bielema was taunting Beamer about the late subs with an illegal substitution signal, the Illinois coach had a different explanation for what his signal meant.
“There’s an unwritten philosophy in coaching that when you do this (puts his arms out) as the kick off return guy, you’re telling everybody else that i’s going to be a fair catch and dead in the end zone when the ball lands,” Bielema said. “The reason we do that is … kickoff returns are the highest percentage of injury in the sport. So one of the things coaches started to do was to have guys do TBar, and these guys will tell you, everybody does that. I’ve never seen it any other way.
“It’s nothing official. It’s nothing illegal. They didn’t do anything illegal. But it put us in a position where the ethic of what that is— our kids stopped. … I did it to the whole damn sideline. I didn’t do it to him. I did it to the whole sideline.”
While the South Carolina head coach was extremely angry, Bielema was laughing about the entire incident while walking back to the Illinois sideline.
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Illinois led 14-10 at the time of the incident and it was a thriller from there. South Carolina took a 17-14 lead before Illinois scored to record a 21-17 victory.
The postgame handshake was cordial and both coaches were generally cordial talking about the incident in their postgame press conference.
“I’ve got a lot of respect for him, but I’ve never seen that happen. An opposing coach come over while his player is hurt and basically make a gesture to the opposing head coach,” Beamer said. “I thought that was bush league.”
South Carolina finished its 2024 season with a 9-4 (5-3 SEC) record. Returning some key players, the Gamecocks will be ranked high entering the 2025 season.
