A phone call on Valentine’s Day sealed Shawn Elliott’s decision to leave his position as the head coach at Georgia State and return to the University of South Carolina.
He had received the offer – which came together almost overnight -- to rejoin the Gamecocks staff as run-game coordinator and tight ends coach that day. It was a huge decision, and Elliott, who was ready to make the move, had to bounce the idea off his daughter, Maddyn, a junior in high school.
“I called my daughter and said, ‘If your dad gets an offer to come back to Columbia and work for the Gamecocks, what would you say,’” Elliott recalled. “She instantly just started crying. I mean, she said nothing else. The last thing I told her, and she was still crying, was, ‘That tells me everything.’”
So, Elliott took the job at South Carolina, where he coached as an assistant from 2010-16. It was a rare example of a Division I head coach walking away from a successful program to become a staff assistant, but he said it had nothing to do with the changing college landscape or demands of the job. It was about family. Elliott was weary of being an absentee father and seeing his family only a couple of times each week when he was able to return to their home outside Columbia.
“It was more of a personal decision than a professional decision,” Elliott said. “There’s not many people in the country that are leaving a Division I head coaching job and doing what I’m doing. I’ve always said it’s all about happiness. It’s not about ego and having this and that. It’s about having peace in life and happiness, and this is going to bring it.”
Now that the decision was made, he had to tell the players and staff members at Georgia State in what he called “the single-hardest day of my life.”
That’s because Elliott wasn’t a prototypical head coach. He was actively involved with the players each day. He ran the scout team at practice. He lifted weights alongside them and challenged them by setting an example. Now he had to let them know he was leaving.
“I had a different relationship with our players. I loved getting involved with them,” he said. “And for me to walk in there and tell them I was not going to be their head coach any longer, that destroyed me for that day. It was so tough and emotionally I could barely stand up in front of them, knowing I was leaving a great group of men and women on the staff and leaving those players that bought into what I was selling and believed in me and wanted to come to Georgia State.”
After that tear-filled meeting, Elliott got in his black pickup truck, drove four blocks to I-20, turned right and headed toward Columbia. The solitude was almost too much to bear.
“That three-hour drive back to Columbia was hard,” he said. “It’s really, really tough driving by yourself and all you can think about is what transpired in the last 24 hours and you just left your staff and your team … the hurt and the heartache I knew they were going to go through, all the difficulties they were going to go through because of the decision I made. It weighed heavily on my mind.”
When he got home, Elliott opened his phone to find hundreds of text messages from friends and fans asking him to change his mind and stay in Atlanta. But when he unlocked the front door and entered his home, Elliott knew he’d done the right thing.
“I walk in the front door, and there’s my wife, and there’s my kids, and I really just became overwhelmed with emotion,” he said. “It was just the opposite of what I just had that early morning. Just happiness and thrilled to be back.”
There wasn’t time for a lengthy reunion. The Elliotts almost immediately drove to watch his son, Max, play in the school’s lacrosse game. And afterward the family enjoyed a celebration at a local Mexican restaurant.
“It was a great night. Not planned out at all, but it worked out great,” he said.
Credit: David Barnes
Credit: David Barnes
In seven years at Georgia State, Elliott put the program on the map. There was the signature win over Tennessee in 2019, five winning seasons – including a school-record eight wins in 2021 – and four wins in five bowl appearances. The program became relevant under his watch.
“When we played at Georgia Southern this past year, and they beat us, and their fans stayed around and stormed the field because they beat Georgia State … that’s when I knew I had done my job at Georgia State,” Elliott said. “They never even wanted to admit Georgia State was a threat or even a factor, and they stayed around until the end and stormed the field. I knew I had done my job.”
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