From nobody to a star: South Carolina QB LaNorris Sellers is making a name for himself

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- There aren't many places LaNorris Sellers can go without being noticed. After a spectacular second season at South Carolina in which he took the Gamecocks to the brink of the College Football Playoff, coach Shane Beamer said Sellers is "among the most recognizable people in the state," and the QB is taking selfies and signing autographs everywhere he goes.

"Sometimes, they don't even have anything to sign," Sellers said. "They just want me to sign their shirt or their forehead. I signed one guy's arm, and he got my signature tattooed on afterward."

And yet, there's a twist to so many of the Sellers sightings, a response he hears again and again: I thought you'd be bigger.

Make no mistake, at 6-foot-3, 245 pounds, Sellers is a giant by college QB standards. It's just that, after seeing him in uniform and watching him play -- the way he can steamroll a linebacker or wear down a defensive end by dodging and escaping sacks -- the real Sellers, the one in sweats and slides and his signature eyeglasses, looks ... well, normal.

All of that calls to mind another soft-spoken hero who dons a pair of glasses to hide among the masses, then when duty calls, ducks into a phone booth -- or, in this case, a locker room -- and transforms into a superhero.

Is it possible that Sellers is Superman?

"People look at him and think he's the nicest guy ever," his father, Norris, said. "But he changes into something different when he puts that uniform on, now."

But no, LaNorris doesn't accept the title. He grew up idolizing Cam Newton, who already owns the nickname, and the South Carolina QB wouldn't dare infringe on his own hero's brand.

Still, Mike Shula sees it. The Gamecocks offensive coordinator used to call plays for Newton in the NFL, and he remembers the former Carolina Panthers QB showing up dressed to the nines, all glitz and glamour, hardly Superman. Then, the pads and helmet went on and, in a flash, "you'd be like, 'Wow,'" Shula said. He sees the same thing with Sellers.

South Carolina opened last season the same way it seems to open every season -- overlooked and outmatched by the deep well of talent in the SEC. And then, just when all hope appeared lost after a two-point loss to Alabama, Sellers' powers blossomed, growing each week on the field, with every Gamecocks fan watching in awe.

He might not be Superman, but movies have been made about heroes with lesser powers.

Those scripts get the green light only if the hero wins in the end, however. After a whirlwind season in which he went from a nobody to a star, Sellers wants to deliver a triumphant ending.

"It was just a couple plays off last year," Sellers said. "So, it's about fixing those plays and making the playoff."

WHEN SELLERS WAS in high school, he "wanted nothing to do with South Carolina."

This is something Norris and Beamer have since joked about, but the Sellers family has a pretty strict rule that they don't go where they're not invited, and South Carolina effectively ignored Sellers throughout his high school career.

It wasn't entirely Beamer's fault. Sellers wasn't an obvious prospect early on. He started playing football at age 5 as a way for his parents to keep him active. Norris figured he'd check the box for football, then move on to basketball or baseball, but his son loved it. A few years later, Norris pressed his son on the future.

"Do you want to stick with this?" he asked.

LaNorris, then in junior high, said he did.

"Because when we start something," Norris said, "we finish it."

Norris remembers inviting their pastor to the house to pray over LaNorris, to give him the strength and vision to maximize his talent. A year later, the once stout Sellers sprouted 6 or 7 inches in a few months. Before games, Sellers would study YouTube clips to learn defenses, then he'd lie in his bed and play out an imaginary contest in his mind before taking the field.

"He knew how to read a defense when he was playing Pee Wee," Norris said.

By high school, the size, speed and smarts all aligned, but in sleepy Florence, South Carolina, he still wasn't a star. He was sidelined because of an injury during his junior season at South Florence High, too, and so the Gamecocks -- along with virtually every other program with sights on a national title -- set sights on other QBs.

Sellers was focused on Virginia. He had a close relationship with Jason Beck, then the Cavaliers' QB coach, and the family loved Charlottesville. But head coach Bronco Mendenhall abruptly resigned at the end of 2021, so Sellers flipped his commitment to stick with Beck and OC Robert Anae at Syracuse, where he remained committed until signing day 2022.

Then, fate intervened.

Dino Babers, then the head coach at Syracuse, was nearing the end of his contract without many assurances from the school, which made Sellers nervous. But the Orange opened the season 6-0 and led Clemson by double digits entering the fourth quarter of their next game. A win might've led to a long-term deal for Babers. Instead, the Tigers roared back, won 27-21, and Syracuse finished the season 7-6.

Meanwhile, South Carolina had finally taken notice. Sellers attended a camp in Columbia in summer 2022 alongside a handful of other top QB recruits. No one, Beamer said, looked as good as the kid from Florence. By October, Sellers was well on his way to leading South Florence to a state title, and Beamer wanted to see more, so he invited the family to a game.

"I didn't really want to go," Norris said, "but LaNorris was like, 'We don't have anything else to do.'"

So, they went. South Carolina was hosting No. 5 Tennessee. The crowd at Williams-Brice Stadium was raucous, the energy palpable, and the performance -- a stunning 63-38 Gamecocks win -- overwhelming. After it was over, Norris turned to his son and shook his head.

"We might need to rethink South Carolina," he said.

Just hours before signing day, LaNorris called Babers and delivered the news. He had changed his mind. He was staying home, going to South Carolina.

During South Carolina's first scrimmage in spring 2023, with QBs cleared to be tackled, Sellers dropped back to pass, scrambled out of trouble, broke six tackles then drug a defender for 3 yards to pick up a first down. Beamer looked at one of his assistants and smiled.

If the rest of the country hadn't yet noticed Sellers' superpowers, Beamer was convinced.

"He showed enough where we were like, there's something different about this guy," Beamer said. "He got a lot of people excited."

IF THERE'S A play that defined Sellers' coming-of-age season in 2024, it's the scramble on third-and-16 to beat Clemson. South Carolina trailed 14-10 with just over a minute to play. Pressure comes, and Sellers steps up in the pocket to find the interior of the line out of position. He cuts right, then left, then right again. At some point, nearly all 11 Clemson defenders had a bead on him, and none wrapped up his jersey as he marched into the end zone for a 20-yard touchdown and, ultimately, a 17-14 win.

Sellers has seen the play countless times -- sometimes for his own enjoyment, but usually because a friend or fan or teammate has sent it to him.

"You can't escape it," he said.

In the frenzied aftermath of the win, Beamer pronounced his QB the best player in the country, and having witnessed Sellers' 166 rushing yards and two touchdowns, it was hard to argue.

Three months earlier, however, it would've been impossible to imagine.

In his first career start against Old Dominion, Sellers completed just 10 of 23 passes, and South Carolina barely escaped with a 23-19 win.

"I missed a lot of stuff," Sellers said. "It hurts to see. It could've been completely different."

A week later, he was marginally better vs. Kentucky, but he missed a few series in the second quarter because of an injury. A week after that, he was absent for the second half against LSU, then sat out the Akron game, still recovering from a tweaked ankle. He returned Oct. 5 against Ole Miss in what would be his first full game against an SEC opponent. He struggled, and South Carolina was overwhelmed 27-3. More than a month into the season, Sellers looked a mess.

Suddenly, it all started to click.

Sellers is more a listener than a talker, Shula said, and he'll speak if necessary, but it can be a chore to get him to truly engage. He's "urgently quiet," Shula said.

But Shula has adapted. He never asks a yes-or-no question because that's all Sellers will offer. He asks Sellers to draw and explain plays to the room on the whiteboard. And Shula needles his QB -- he pulls on his wristbands as he strides past or delivers insults while standing behind him at practice.

"That would've been a pick."

"Who was that throw to?"

"Boy, I hope you know how to tackle."

In a late-season win over Wofford, Sellers threw a pick on a play Shula had highlighted all week in practice. "If you're going to throw it, it better be right," Shula had insisted and, of course, it wasn't right.

"Before I even got to the sideline, I heard him yelling," Sellers said.

Sellers won't flinch, though. If anything, he likes the insults. Guys in the locker room tease him, and he just grins.

"It's one of the reasons his teammates like him so much," Beamer said.

The genius of Shula's plan wasn't to push hard enough for Sellers to erupt in righteous furor. He knew Sellers lived inside his own head. He just wanted to ensure Sellers was having the right conversation with himself, so he forced his QB to push back -- internally if not vocally.

If there was a knock on Sellers entering the season, Beamer conceded, it was confidence. By the time Sellers suited up against Alabama on Oct. 12, that wasn't an issue.

"The confidence and the experience," Beamer said, "he got better each week."

The Gamecocks lost to Alabama, but the effort was there. They didn't lose again in the regular season.

From Week 7 through the touchdown run vs. Clemson, Sellers threw for 2,174 yards, ran for 455 more and accounted for 19 touchdowns.

More than the raw numbers, however, was the way he did it. He was a wrecking ball, a quarterback who demoralized the opposition, a guy who, as teammate DQ Smith said, forced defenders to "make business decisions."

Oklahoma coach Brent Venables: "He's a monster. You can't do anything in practice because there ain't nobody else as thick and explosive."

Texas A&M's Will Lee III: "He runs like Adrian Peterson."

Missouri's Zion Young: "He's a dog, man."

Sellers remembers Missouri talking smack before the Nov. 16 game. He smiled and offered a half-hearted, "Whatever." As the game wore on, the chirping trickled to a stop, and Sellers could see on the faces of the exhausted defenders that he had broken them. He accounted for nearly 400 yards and five touchdowns in a 34-30 win.

There are things Sellers wants to improve this year -- timing routes, footwork, staying calm in the pocket -- but his biggest asset remains the thing that is hardwired into his DNA.

To really understand Sellers' magic, don't just watch the last play against Clemson. Instead, watch his scramble on the first drive of the game, when the Clemson defensive line is closing in on him, yet he steps up and dashes down the middle of the field for 38 yards.

"It looked like we were in a huddle," Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said. "Like we huddled up. And all of a sudden, he comes out of it."

Or there's the 28-yard TD when he splits two defenders before barreling into the end zone; or the run when he steamrolls 315-pound Peter Woods before carrying a DB another 8 yards; or the third-and-3 when he runs about 30 yards in the backfield on a bootleg to avoid traffic before picking up the first down.

The official record shows Sellers with 10 forced missed tackles. Swinney's count is closer to 30.

"We stunk it up on defense," Swinney said, "but he's a special player."

Again and again, defenses believed they had an answer for Sellers, only for him to prove otherwise. He doesn't talk trash to opponents. He just wears them down until they concede defeat.

OK, there is one situation that does get under Sellers' skin. In practice, he'll be decked out in a noncontact jersey, which takes all the fun out of the proceedings. He'll dart and scramble and, before the real magic happens, a coach blows the whistle and calls the play dead.

Bulls---, Sellers thinks.

Sellers wants to be the hero, and nothing frustrates him more than not getting the chance.

THE STORY THAT made the rounds this summer was about money.

Beamer knew that as Sellers' stock rose, many of the teams that had once ignored his QB would come calling. Sure enough, Sellers' phone was flooded by year's end with offers of NIL money and a bigger stage.

"Players recruit. That's the legal way to do it," Sellers said. "I know guys at schools all over the country, so they send messages."

The numbers Sellers was hearing were mind-boggling, as much as $8 million for the next two years. How could he not listen?

But there's that family motto: If we start something, we're going to finish it.

"I didn't have money before," Sellers said, "so I don't need it now."

There's a story Norris shares about his son's early years playing football -- not a proud moment, but one that has stuck with him.

LaNorris' team was playing in a city league game and was up big. The coach pulled all the starters, most of whom were on the precipice of junior high. In came the 9- or 10-year-olds, all backups. It got ugly.

"They were being vicious against the smaller players," Norris said. "One of their players, he tackled a kid and tried to rip his helmet off."

There were no flags, so Norris found the head coach and asked for his son to go back into the game. He gave LaNorris his marching orders: Take the snap and hit someone. Don't score, deliver a message.

LaNorris did as he was told. He burst through the line of scrimmage and began to run. It was open grass. He darted toward the sideline. About 20 yards downfield, a safety pursued cautiously. LaNorris slowed. The safety came in for the tackle. He met a brick wall. LaNorris bulldozed the kid, and the opposing sideline went ballistic.

"As a dad, that was terrible," Norris said. "But I didn't care."

That's Superman's job -- to pursue justice.

Perhaps Sellers is the superhero, duty-bound to South Carolina, eager to fulfill his destiny. Or maybe that's just a story the rest of the world wants to tell now that Sellers is a star, and in reality, his pursuit of a championship isn't mythology so much as determination.

When the South Carolina women's basketball team won it all in 2024, Sellers was among the revelers celebrating the title. Columbia was vibrant with jubilation, and he began to dream. What would this look like if the football team could make the playoff, win a game or two, go all the way?

"They may never sleep again here," he said.

Until then, he's just the mild-mannered QB, bespectacled and quiet, waiting to answer the call.

"Just because they say it doesn't mean it's going to happen," Sellers said. "So, I'm going to work and doing what I've been doing all my life."