COLUMBIA — He was there to be honored for being inducted into the College Baseball Hall of Fame. Yet Ray Tanner, former South Carolina athletic director and the man who made the Gamecocks a national championship baseball program, talked about other topics.
The most pressing of which he probably knew was coming, but candidly answered.
“Why are USC’s major sports struggling so badly?”
“It is cyclical. I believe that. It happens that way,” Tanner said, standing in the press box of the field that bears his name. “There’s ups and downs.
“Was talking about men’s basketball this morning a little bit with one of my friends, and just a couple years ago, Lamont (Paris) won 26 games. So, did he forget how to coach? No. I mean, things happen, for whatever reason.”
They do, and Tanner was correct on the cycle. When successor Jeremiah Donati officially began work on Jan. 2, 2025, the men’s basketball team was beginning what would be a disastrous SEC season. Paris was the reigning SEC Coach of the Year, but his follow-up to an NCAA Tournament season was a 2-16 league finish.
That led into baseball, where first-year coach Paul Mainieri steered the Gamecocks to their worst season in history. Then onto football, where another reigning SEC Coach of the Year, Shane Beamer, went from a 9-4 season in 2024 to a 4-8 stinker in 2025.
The combined record of SEC wins and/or Power-4 wins among the “Big Three” sports over the past calendar year is the worst in the SEC and one of the worst in USC’s history. And it certainly seems as if there’s no end in sight with the men’s basketball team currently 2-11 in the league.
The link, as USC fans who light up social media after every loss with raging choler spittle covering every keystroke, is Tanner. He hired all of those coaches.
It’s also the final stamp on Tanner’s 12-year tenure as AD that his major hires have mostly not succeeded, with the jury still out on Beamer, who has had three good years and two bad years. Each of the men Tanner chose to replace himself as baseball coach (Chad Holbrook, Mark Kingston, Mainieri) have been behind the wheel as the once-feared Gamecocks have become irrelevant. He hired Will Muschamp to replace Steve Spurrier as football coach and Paris to replace Frank Martin as men’s basketball coach.
Tanner also chose Tony Annan as men’s soccer coach, who has yet to the make the NCAA Tournament in five seasons (but was given a two-year extension through 2028 by Donati).
It hasn’t all been destitute. Tanner also hired Tom Mendoza as volleyball coach, and he led the Gamecocks to four NCAA Tournaments when the program hadn’t gone to one in 16 years before him (Donati replaced him with Sarah Rumely Noble when Mendoza took the job at Marquette).
Tanner also hired Carol Gwin, who won an SEC championship in her first year as equestrian coach and has knocked off two No. 1 teams this season, and Ashley Chastain Woodard, who revitalized the softball program in her first year.
But the big sports, the revenue sports and the sport that Tanner led, are going through hard times. Yet he said it’s the carousel of any sport. Good can become bad and vice versa, very quickly.
“I follow it closely, and I live vicariously through what’s going on,” he said. “I love being here. You want everybody to do well and to win, and you check softball scores if you’re not there or you see how the equestrian team is doing. That’s just what it’s all about.”
Former Gamecock AD talks men’s sports struggles
