After Illinois head coach Bret Bielema went over to check on an injured player, he looked toward the South Carolina sideline. He then stretched out his arms, mimicking an obvious substitution signal.

Gamecocks head coach Shane Beamer took no notice and ran onto the field in anger. Sure, the fourth-year coach had shown plenty of emotion before, but this time he was more excited than ever.

Throughout the game, Illinois had been subbing players in and out late in the game, something Beamer had some trouble with in South Carolina’s 21-17 loss in the Citrus Bowl. Except the whole situation where Bielema threw his arms up wasn’t really about that.

“It’s heated and competitive out there, but in all the years I’ve been involved in football, I’ve never seen an opposing head coach come to the opposing team’s sideline and basically make a gesture towards the team opposing head coach did,” Beamer said after the game.

“I think he was upset about something we did on the kickoff return regarding Juju (McDowell) on the throwback to Nyck Harbor. I would say he needs to check the rule book because we cleared that with the officials before the game. Disappointing.”

Just before the fiasco occurred, McDowell raised his arms in the air, which usually means the ball goes over his head and he takes the touchback on a kickoff return. But in this case, McDowell surprised Illinois by making the gesture and then throwing the ball to the other side of the home end zone. Nyck Harbor waited for McDowell’s pass and then ran 25 yards out of the end zone, which would have been the same distance had the Gamecocks taken the touchback.

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When Bielema first saw this, he was under the impression that it meant South Carolina would not return the kickoff. But as he watched the play unfold, he had a problem with it. But at the same time, he recognized that the Gamecocks didn’t necessarily do anything wrong.

“The reason we do this, and I first became aware of this, was because in the NFL, kickoff and kickoff returns account for the highest percentage of injuries in the sport,” Bielema said. “They didn’t do anything illegal, but it put us in a position where now we – the ethics of what that is, are gone there because our kids are quitting.

“So if you’re a kickoff return unit, if I’m running at you and the kickoff returner back there, the guy blocking me doesn’t know what’s going on, so he’s going to start attacking you and we’ll see “If you do that before it starts, you can stop and slow down and you won’t have these massive collisions.”

Bielema also made it clear that he did not aim the gesture directly at Beamer when he was near their sideline. As he put it, he did it “all over their sidelines.”

“Listen, I love Shane. He’s a good person,” Bielema said. “I’m not targeting him personally. I did it all over her sideline. I wanted them to understand that I knew what just happened.”

Tensions were high on both sides for the rest of the game. Despite everything that had happened, both Beamer and Bielema met in midfield to greet each other after the game. They shook hands, said a few words to each other and then separated.

“I have a lot of respect for him,” Beamer said of Bielema. “He’s obviously been doing this for a long time, but in all my years of coaching I’ve never seen anything like this. An opposing coach comes over while his player is injured and basically wants to say something to the opposing head coach. I have to take care of my own team. We weren’t good enough today.”