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A lot of people will tell you that bowl games don't matter, but don't tell that to Bret Bielema and Shane Beamer. The Illinois football team took on South Carolina in the Citrus Bowl on Tuesday, and it was clear that both of those teams wanted to win badly. In fact, things got so heated at one point in the second half that Beamer had to be held back by his staff members as he was livid at Bielema because of a gesture that was made.
An Illinois football player was down near the South Carolina sideline at one point in the second half and Bret Bielema went over to check on his player. He then did the T-bar gesture that you will see on kickoffs as he walked away, and Shane Beamer thought that Bielema was taunting him. Bielema explained what happened after the game.
“The only thing that I did was there's an unwritten philosophy in coaching that when we do this (arms sticking out to the side with closed fists, T-bar) as a college kickoff return guy, what we took it is, you're telling everybody else that it's going to be a fair catch and it's going to be dead in the in the end zone when the ball lands,” Bielema said, according to a post from Carson Gourdie. “The reason we do that, and I first got aware of it, was in the NFL, was because kickoff and kickoff return is the highest percentage of injury in the sport. So one of the things that coaches began to do was everybody out of respect started T-barring, I think these guys will tell you, everybody does that. I've never seen it any other way. It's not official. There's nothing illegal. They didn't do anything illegal, but it put us, I think, in a position that where the ethics of what that is got evaporated there, because our kids stopped.”
Bielema has a lot of respect for Beamer, but he clearly wasn't happy about that unwritten rule not being followed.
“If I'm running at you and a kickoff returner is back there, the guy blocking me, he doesn't know what's going on, so he's going to begin to engage you,” Bielema continued. “And we see somebody do that before the whistle is blown, you can stop… you don't have these massive collisions. Listen, I love Shane. He's good person. I know somebody said that he thought I did it him. I did it to the whole sideline. I just wanted them to understand that I know what has happened. There's nothing illegal, there's nothing wrong. I just have never seen that at any level of football, college or professional.”
Shane Beamer also discussed the situation after the game, and he couldn't believe that Bret Bielema gestured toward him and the sideline, noting that he had never seen that happen before.
“It’s heated and competitive out there … but in all my years of being around football, I’ve never see an opposing head coach come over to the opposing team’s sideline and basically make a gesture toward the opposing head coach,” Beamer said, according to an article from Awful Announcing. “I’m disappointed, I’ve got a lot of respect for him, he’s obviously done this for a long time, but in all my years of coaching I’ve never seen that happen, the opposing coach come over, while his player’s hurt, and basically have something to say.”
The chatter continued between the two coaches into the new year as Bielema took to social media on Wednesday. He responded to a video of Beamer explaining the situation and he credited the South Carolina head coach for his explanation. However, Bielema pointed out that he was not taunting the head coach, or anybody for that matter.
“This is the best explanation of everything that happened and I couldn’t agree more,” Bielema said in a post. “Except I wasn’t taunting Coach I was telling the whole SIDELINE that we knew the standard for football at every level for years has been disregarded moving forward.”
There really wasn't much on the line in the Citrus Bowl, but it's clear that these games mean a lot to both the players and the coaches. That has been clear throughout bowl season and Bret Bielema and Shane Beamer both showed a lot of passion during and after Tuesday's game.
