There’s something different about Shane Beamer and his South Carolina football staff on the recruiting trail. The Gamecocks landed some quality players in recruiting during the Will Muschamp era, but the majority of the high-profile wins were in-state players, or they were from another nearby state and were lightly recruited by the home state program.
In fact, since the recruiting industry became what college football fans know it is as today, the Gamecocks had never signed an out-of-state consensus 5-star player (players like MarShawn Lloyd and Chris Culliver were 5-stars by at least one recruiting service but were not consensus 5-stars).