South Carolina Baseball: Gamecocks officially hire Paul Mainieri, fan reaction mixed

It's official: South Carolina baseball has a new head coach. After a week of rumors about targets like Cliff Godwin, Tom Walter, Chris Pollard, Landon Powell, Monte Lee, and others, reports started surfacing on Monday afternoon that a former National Champion who had not been on the public radar at all was going to be the man for the job.

Reports followed shortly after that Paul Mainieri, the former head coach at LSU from 2007-2021, was set to be hired. Now, after the Board of Trustees met on Tuesday, the hire is official. Paul Mainieri is the head coach of the South Carolina baseball program. He will make $1.3 Million per season for 5 years.

Mainieri is set to bring on his former assistant Terry Rooney as the team's pitching coach, and Monte Lee is returning to the staff, as well. That leaves one more assistant coach position available.

The fanbase's reaction to the news has been mixed.

Some fans are fired up about bringing in the 2009 National Championship-winning coach.

Others view this as a bad hire thanks to Mainieri's age and his lack of experience working during the NIL and transfer portal era.

And still others are taking a more measured, wait-and-see approach.

The reality of this hire is that there are legitimate avenues to success or failure for Mainieri and the South Carolina baseball program over the next several years (more to come on those pros and cons later). There is no doubt that Mainieri was a great coach for a long time, but the questions around his age and the modern state of college baseball are real. If he can answer those questions well, he could lead USC to great heights quickly. If he can't, things will go poorly.

For now, the Gamecocks and their fans will begin the Paul Mainieri era as they usually do: with hopefulness.