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Chris Low, ESPN Senior Writer
Another FBS head coach is leaving for a coordinator and/or position coaching job in college football, as Georgia State‘s Shawn Elliott has agreed to return to South Carolina as tight ends coach and run game coordinator.
“This was not a professional move, but a personal move,” Elliott told ESPN. “We’ve made it work for seven years with my family still living in Columbia, and I even thought about not coaching this year. I had promised my daughter that I would be there for her senior year of high school and when this opportunity came up to go back to South Carolina and coach again, it was something I couldn’t pass up. I’ve always loved South Carolina.”
Elliott informed his staff and the players at Georgia State on Thursday morning that he was leaving.
“They’ve been coming in here ever since. We laughed together and cried together. I’m proud of what we’ve done here,” Elliott said.
Georgia State athletic director Charlie Cobb said in a statement that the remainder of spring football practices and the school’s Spring Game have been postponed in the wake of Elliott’s departure.
Elliott is originally from Camden, South Carolina, and coached on South Carolina’s staff from 2010-16 and worked alongside current South Carolina coach Shane Beamer on the Gamecocks’ 2010 staff. Elliott’s family has remained in Columbia the whole time he coached at Georgia State and he has a son playing high school football in Columbia and a daughter who’s a high school cheerleader.
Elliott is the fourth head coach this offseason to leave for a non-head-coaching job at a Power 5 school. UCLA’s Chip Kelly left to become offensive coordinator at Ohio State. South Alabama’s Kane Wommack joined Alabama as defensive coordinator and Buffalo’s Maurice Linguist went to Alabama as co-defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach. In addition, Boston College’s Jeff Hafley left to become the Green Bay Packers’ defensive coordinator.
Elliott, 50, guided the Panthers to five winning seasons and four bowl victories in seven seasons in Atlanta. He was 41-44 overall. Georgia State didn’t start playing football until 2010 and suffered through six straight losing seasons before Elliott’s arrival.
In his previous stint at South Carolina, Elliott worked under both Will Muschamp and Steve Spurrier as offensive line coach and later co-offensive coordinator. He was a part of South Carolina teams that won 11 games in three straight seasons from 2011-13 and finished in the top 10 in the final polls all three years.
When Spurrier stepped down in the middle of the 2015 season, Elliott was named as interim head coach for the remainder of the season.