LaNorris Sellers, South Carolina's 'Interstellar' QB, knows time is fleeting. So is his team's title window

COLUMBIA, S.C. – LaNorris Sellers loves Christopher Nolan movies. 

The 6-foot-3, 240-pound South Carolina quarterback looks like he could be the face of a superhero movie, but he prefers ones that make him think. His favorite is "Interstellar" for the way it plays with time and all comes together at the end. 

In the movie, Matthew McConaughey's character has to go on a space mission and because of a wormhole, every hour he spends is seven years back on Earth. 

It's a heartbreaking scene as the character sobs when he realizes how much he has missed back home, but it highlights how fleeting life can be, how every moment needs to be cherished and maximized. 

The star South Carolina quarterback thought about it as he went through spring practice this year. Just like McConaughey's character, it felt like Sellers just got to South Carolina and yet somehow three spring camps had already passed. A potential top-10 pick in the 2026 NFL Draft should he come out early, Sellers said it hit him that it could be his last year at South Carolina or he could still have multiple more to come.

"But," Sellers says, "it's crazy to think about how fast it is going."

And with that comes an important question: Can South Carolina capitalize on this current opportunity? 

With Sellers and star defensive end Dylan Stewart leading the way, the Gamecocks have two potentially transcendent talents at the two most important positions on the team. They are the kind of foundational pieces you can win a national championship with, something South Carolina has never accomplished in football. 

South Carolina could have both for multiple seasons or, as Sellers noted, this could be the final season for the star QB. 

After just missing the College Football Playoff a year ago, South Carolina starts the season as No. 13 in the country, its first time in the preseason top 15 since 2014, and believes this could be the year it finally all clicks. It starts Sunday against Virginia Tech in Atlanta. 

"I'm not dumb," South Carolina coach Shane Beamer told CBS Sports, "I realize (LaNorris and Dylan) are special, special guys and you want to maximize every year where you're winning, you're recruiting at a high level, and you're bringing in the next guys to play them as well. There's urgency each and every year and we're doing everything in our power for 2025 to be as special as it can be."

Jeremiah Donati had just been hired as South Carolina's new athletic director last December but had yet to be formally introduced when a man came up to him at the hotel he was staying at. 

After explaining he was a big South Carolina fan, the man told him the first two things Donati needed to do as the Gamecocks' new AD: 

Help Beamer keep Sellers.

Help Beamer keep Stewart.

"I was literally on the ground for 10 seconds before I was made aware of the sense of urgency of that and how important those two are to the community and to our fans," Donati said. 

Fortunately for Donati, South Carolina was already on it. 

The Gamecocks' brain trust realized early on that it was going to have to spend to fend off the potential poachers of its crown jewels. Sellers, who started the season as a relative unknown as a redshirt freshman, was on an especially team-friendly NIL deal in the low six figures that he quickly started outperforming. 

He was lightly recruited out of high school and was actually committed to both Virginia and Syracuse before eventually flipping late in the process to South Carolina. Sellers had total belief in Jason Beck, now Utah's offensive coordinator, and Robert Anae, and followed them from Virginia to Syracuse as a commitment. But Sellers sensed things were getting a bit rocky at Syracuse  -- that proved prophetic when Dino Babers was fired midway through the following season -- and reconsidered whether he really wanted to go so far from home. 

South Carolina was late to get heavily involved with Sellers, waiting until October of his senior season before extending a scholarship offer. But Beamer and new offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains became enamored with Sellers' potential as a big, strong quarterback with the kind of athleticism that keeps opposing defensive coordinators up at night. 

Sellers redshirted that first season behind starter Spencer Rattler and entered last season largely unknown to the general public. He had thrown a total of four collegiate passes – though all were completions and two were touchdowns – and wasn't a famous name as only a three-star recruit. South Carolina knew Sellers had a high ceiling but still brought in Auburn transfer Robby Ashford to compete for the job. The outside world even seemed to expect Ashford, who started 10 games at Auburn, would win the starting role. 247Sports ranked him as the second-worst starting quarterback in the SEC. 

"Last year nobody knew who he was," Beamer said. "He played a little bit in 2023 and it was enough for us to say 'Ooh he's going to be pretty good,' and we knew that. But, still, he's going to be a redshirt freshman quarterback starting in the SEC. I thought he handled that better and better as the year went on."

It was bumpy to start as Sellers went 10 of 23 for 114 yards in a much closer than expected season-opening 23-19 win over Old Dominion. He started settling in as the season progressed and it wasn't long before South Carolina realized it needed to get a jump-start on a new deal for him. 

The process began during South Carolina's bye in Week 5 after a 3-1 start that included a win over Kentucky and a close loss to LSU that easily could have gone the other way had Sellers not been injured and missed the second half. Darren Uscher, South Carolina's director of player personnel and recruiting, and Jeremy Smith, who runs South Carolina NIL collective Garnet Trust, met and determined retaining Sellers and Stewart was a top priority. 

Sensing the market value for both was on the rise, their agents held off on agreeing to any new deals but it at least got the conversation started. By South Carolina's second bye of the season in Week 9, Uscher and Smith cranked up the intensity in trying to get deals done. They knew the transfer portal would be there soon and didn't want to leave anything to chance. 

By the time Sellers and Stewart were celebrating a 17-14 win over in-state rival Clemson, "we pretty much had deals in place," Uscher said. Both are now making seven figures, according to sources, and Sellers has landed multiple endorsement deals since his standout 2024 season. 

Settling deals in place did not stop others from making runs at the star duo, though. Sellers' father told The Athletic the highest offer from an unnamed school was $8 million over two years, the same deal Duke eventually gave to Tulane quarterback Darian Mensah. The early jump on negotiating certainly helped South Carolina, but so, too, did the genuine relationships Beamer and his staff had made with their stars. Sellers and Stewart enjoyed being at South Carolina and trying to lift the program to greater heights, and were willing to take less money to stay than they could have made on the open market. 

"You're paranoid with people throwing crazy numbers at you -- illegally by the way -- but they never wavered and we were able to get deals done with both of them," Uscher said. "Two deals that help the rest of the team. I don't want to say sweetheart deals, but they are cognizant that if we spend all the money on those two then they don't have good teammates around them." 

The priority for South Carolina will always be developing and retaining homegrown talent, but it was still aggressive in the transfer portal to give Sellers and Stewart a stellar supporting cast. It got good news earlier this week when one of its biggest additions, running back Rahsul Faison, finally got a waiver from the NCAA to play this season. 

Beamer was on spring break with his family when he got a call from Dowell Loggains, then the Gamecocks' offensive coordinator.

"What do you think about Mike Shula," Loggains asked him.

The former Alabama head coach spent the 2023 season as the Buffalo Bills' senior offensive assistant, but was looking to get back to the Carolinas. Shula loved his time in the area when he worked as the Carolina Panthers' offensive coordinator and wondered if there might be an opportunity for him at South Carolina. 

It didn't take long for Beamer to get on board. "Heck yeah let's do it," he told Loggains. He hired him as an off-field senior offensive assistant. 

"I was intrigued because of the quarterbacks he had been around knowing that we were going to have LaNorris Sellers or Robby Ashford last year as our quarterback, big guys who could run," Beamer said. "Mike had been around Cam Newton, he had been around Daniel Jones, he had been around Josh Allen, and I thought that would be really beneficial to work with the quarterbacks. Not to mention, he's played quarterback in the SEC, so it was awesome from a professional standpoint."

And when Loggains left last December to become Appalachian State's head coach, Beamer quickly turned to Shula to fill the role. Loggains left on a Saturday, South Carolina found out it was going to the Citrus Bowl on Sunday and Beamer met with Shula on Monday to tell him he was the guy.

Now the Gamecocks' offensive coordinator, Shula gets to work with the closest thing college football has seen to Cam Newton in years. The physical and playing style similarities are obvious, but it goes deeper than that. Sellers grew up as a huge Carolina Panthers fan and loved Newton as his favorite player. Shula, of course, coached Newton during the peak of his NFL powers including the magical 2015 run to the Super Bowl when Cam was league MVP.

Sellers says he asks Shula all the time about Cam. Shula says Sellers is quieter than Newton but he's earned respect from the team for the quiet way he leads. The long-time former NFL assistant likes how inquisitive his quarterback is, always willing to ask the question and admit if he doesn't know something if it could make him better. The two have hit it off, with Sellers teaching Shula lingo like "cap" and "mid." Shula, for his part, likes to joke including throwing fake poop to mark bad plays.

Beyond the personal, though, South Carolina hopes — and believes – that Shula can help take Sellers to another level after he threw for 2,534 yards 18 touchdowns and added another 674 rushing yards. No longer an unknown, Sellers enters this season with considerably more hype and pressure to perform, though those around him say nothing has changed about him. He's still the same polite "yes, sir" "no, ma'am" young man who doesn't get rattled easily that he was a year ago, albeit with more people wanting his time and attention. CBS Sports' Blake Brockermeyer ranked him as his No. 3 player in the country headed into this season and said Sellers possesses athleticism that puts him on the "short list of best dual-threat QBs of the last decade."

As well regarded a QB guru as there is, Shula loves what Sellers is capable of doing this season. 

"Everybody knows he's got the reins," Shula told CBS Sports. "He has talent throwing the ball. He's got talent running the ball. He's got a really good mind. He picks things up quickly. He hasn't played a lot of ball -- just one year -- so there's just so much more than he has to learn just by experience. It's not big things, it's going to be the collection of a lot of little things that will help him play faster."

South Carolina was thisclose to breaking through and making the College Football Playoff a year ago. The Gamecocks finished the regular season as one of the hottest teams in the country, with wins over Texas A&M, Missouri and Clemson. Sellers was Superman against the arch-rival Tigers, breaking a preposterous 18 tackles on 176 rushing yards after contact -- including a touchdown scamper on 3rd-and-16 that won the game and officially minted the Cam Newton/Vince Young comparisons. 

The Gamecocks were one of three SEC teams that just missed the CFP cut and certainly played a role in the recent tweaking of playoff metrics to better emphasize tough scheduling. 

When you come that close to surviving the SEC gauntlet and making the playoff, it ramps up the pressure and hype the following season. It puts Beamer and the South Carolina coaching staff in a tricky position, too. You want to use the heartbreak of missing the playoff to motivate the team, but also don't want complacency to set in where anyone thinks even repeating that can be taken for granted. 

They've harped on how every play matters and can be the difference between winning and losing, from having a chance to compete for a national championship and sitting at home disappointed over what could have been. 

One play is different against LSU, and South Carolina is in the playoff. One play is different against Alabama, and South Carolina is in the playoff. 

"We know how close we were to the playoff, but what it made us realize as a team is every play freaking matters, especially in this conference," Uscher said. "There's a different focus, there's a hunger there. Nine (wins) is not good enough." 

For as close as South Carolina got, Beamer said it crystallized all the things the Gamecocks could have done better last season. It's an opportunity, he believes, they can't take for granted again. No one wants to be reminiscing about thisclose year after year. 

"At the end of the day, we left it in other people's hands," Beamer said. "There's things that we didn't do. There should be an edge about ourselves, there should be a hunger about ourselves."

Said Sellers: "I think we're capable of a lot more than we did last year, like making the playoffs. I think we can do it as a team (with) the mindset everybody has. The young guys coming in, the transfers, they bought into the program. As soon as they got here, they didn't complain and asked questions if they were confused about something. 

"Everybody's bought in. Now, we just gotta go and put it all together." 

With Beamer leading the way, the future looks very bright in Columbia. South Carolina recently landed the nation's No. 1 inside offensive lineman in five-star Darius Gray and currently has a top 20 recruiting class. If the Gamecocks return what Beamer believes is possible for 2026, he says they'll have a chance to be "really, really good because of the amount of young talent we have in our program." 

For 2025, though, there's a real opportunity for South Carolina to transcend as a program. Sellers' brilliant talent and potential to to be even better this season gives South Carolina fans hope that their playoff dream can become reality. The Sellers era will be over in a flash, but when the highlight tape plays, the memories could be good enough to prompt tears of joy. 

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