After the season-ending defeat to Clemson, South Carolina fans hardly had time to recover before the next wave of uncertainty struck. And in the middle of all that is LaNorris Sellers, whose one ski trip was enough to send the fanbase spiraling into transfer-portal paranoia. With two years of eligibility remaining, Sellers can either stay at South Carolina or explore the transfer portal, and every vague offseason sighting is now getting treated like a clue. But the program is pushing forward with a new OC, Kendal Briles, who has a whole lot of hope with Sellers being part of the future.

The newly hired OC was brutally honest and didn’t pretend to have the inside scoop, saying, “I think you know I’m probably not 100 percent in the loop. What’s going on with LaNorris, I think they had some conversation, he’s going to make a decision and put confidence….You know, we all want him to be in this program and be the start quarterback.”

Even without a public decision from Sellers, Shane Beamer moved forward with an offensive overhaul by hiring Kendal Briles as the new offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach, with Randy Clements and Stan Drayton also joining the staff. The changes come after a 4–8 season in which South Carolina’s offense struggled near the bottom of the SEC in scoring and production. Briles’ stated plan is to build the system around the 6-foot-3, 240-pound dual-threat quarterback if Sellers chooses to stay.  Sellers’ next move can reshape this entire plan, but Briles’ message was clear that this is still LaNorris’ offense, if he wants it.

And if anybody needed further confirmation about how important LaNorris Sellers is to this rebuild, Briles provided it in a way that makes his priorities very evident.  “It’s really more the offense fitting around him,” Briles said. “He’s the quarterback. He’s touching the ball every single snap. I’m not going to go out there and ask him to do something he’s not great at. We’re going to build the offense around him, and the rest of the personnel and do things he’s really good at. We want him to be comfortable.… We’re going to do the things he feels really comfortable with. I’m excited to work with him. Seems like a great kid.”

And that makes sense when you look back at Sellers’ 2024 breakout: 2,534 passing yards and 18 passing touchdowns while also adding 674 rushing yards. But 2025 told a different story South Carolina finished 4–8, and Sellers’ production dipped as the offense struggled. Shane Beamer also made it clear how important Sellers was to the OC hunt. Before the hiring was confirmed, the head coach said that he even had Sellers examine clips on possible possibilities, including Briles’ TCU offense, which supposedly excited the quarterback so much that he reached out to Beamer about it.

But even with all those promising signs, Sellers still hadn’t announced a decision, and when he suddenly slipped away for a winter break, one ski trip was all it took for the entire storyline to take a sharp turn.

LaNorris Sellers’ Boone ski trip sparks wild buzz

What made the Boone sighting so thrilling was not just the fact that LaNorris Sellers was skiing, but also who else was on the mountain. Boone, being a typical vacation destination, Sellers was free to vanish for a few days, as the Gamecocks weren’t practicing. But when fans noticed that Dowell Loggains also posted from the Boone area around the same time, the rumors exploded. There’s no confirmed report that they met; it was pure timing + internet speculation, but it was enough to trigger transfer-portal paranoia.

What adds another layer is how deep the Sellers–Loggains bond runs. Back when Loggains left South Carolina for the HC job at App State, he admitted that the hardest part was calling his quarterback.

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“I told (App State) in the interview process that the hardest thing that I was going to have to do when I left South Carolina was to call LaNorris Sellers,” Loggains said.

And long before Sellers ever wore black and garnet, Loggains had been on his side. “Who is this guy?” he asked as he marched into recruitment offices after watching the clip. And from there on, recruiting Sellers was a mission to him.

“This guy’s got unbelievable character,” Loggains said. “This is going to be an evaluation developmental program. It’s things we learned in the NFL from Coach Bill Parcells in the evaluation process. But (Sellers) was a winner. He was a really good soccer player. He had great feet, which also correlates with playing quarterback.”

And that mission paid off. Sellers became one of the most dynamic young quarterbacks in college football under Loggains. He ran for 655 yards, passed for 2,274 yards, and startled Clemson with the famous go-ahead run in the Palmetto Bowl. Loggains didn’t take leaving South Carolina lightly since it meant leaving their bond behind. He said, “It was really hard between us.” But even as he stepped into his new chapter at App State, the coach made one promise he intends to keep: “I’ll watch him through his journey, and he knows that I’ll always be in his corner.” And that’s why one ski trip turned into a national conspiracy theory.