Their offices sit side by side at the Jacobson Building, just north of Jack Trice Stadium. It makes sense for a father and son who have long shared a passion for football.

Wally Burnham has coached for more than 40 years, and for many of them, his son Shane has followed right along.

“From the time he could take care of himself and go to practice with me and hang around and not get in trouble, I started taking him with me before school to two-a-day practices,” Wally said. “He would sleep in the office and go up to the dorms with the football players.”

Starting at a young age, Shane experienced football at its best. He attended bowl games, met famous players and, most of all, spent time with his father.

“[Football] was in his blood; it was in his everyday life,” Wally said. “Coaching consumes a college football coach. It takes time, and it takes away from the family. But you spend a lot of great time together traveling to different stadiums and different experiences going to bowl games.”

Playing for his father

During his senior year of high school, it did not seem likely Shane would play for his father. Wally was at Florida State, and Shane said he knew he would not be recruited there.

But after the season in which Wally moved on to South Carolina, the possibility of playing for his father came to fruition. As a freshman, Shane joined his father’s team as a linebacker for the Gamecocks.

“I was miserable the first two years,” Shane said. “I thought I could be mature enough to handle getting yelled at by your father  — and then off the field he’s your dad — but I couldn’t.”

For his first two seasons at South Carolina, Shane rarely saw game action. His father said there were difficult moments the two had to work through.

“We had our tough times just like I have tough times with some other kids I coach, but he could always go home to [his] mom,” Wally said with a laugh. “It’s hard to separate on the field father-son, coach-player relationships.”

But Wally said they worked through it, and during Shane’s junior and senior seasons it showed as he got on the field as a starter and excelled as an inside linebacker for the Gamecocks.

Shane jokingly said playing for his father became easier because there were fewer mess-ups on the field and less yelling. Regardless of the struggles during the initial years together, both agreed the time together was special.

“It ended up being an unbelievable experience for me,” Shane said. “For us to catch up on lost time — when you’re a coach’s kid, you don’t get to see dad as much — we got four years where I saw him more than I did the previous eight.”

A call to coach football

Shortly before Shane graduated college, he told his mother they needed to talk. She knew what it was about: Shane wanted to coach football.

Barbara Burnham did not want to hear Shane say it. She looked to her friend Ann Bowden, wife of former Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden, who also had sons who wanted to coach.

“I asked Ann what she told them, and she said, ‘You know what Barbara, if they can live without it, then they need to do something else. If they can’t, then Bobby told them to coach,’” Barbara said. “And I said, ‘Knowing Shane and the way he does everything, he probably can’t live without it.’”

Shortly after, Shane would find out the same thing. He gave coaching a try for a year at the University of Richmond but moved on to selling pharmaceuticals. It was in his time away Shane realized how much he loved football.

“I think eventually he got away from [football] and realized, ‘Hey, this is what I want to do with my life,’” Wally said. “In coaching it can’t be a job, it has to be something you enjoy doing everyday and I think he found that part about it.”

Shane knew he needed to get back on the field. Waking up each morning in his new job, the first thing on his mind was the end of the workday.

“In coaching I never have that, I never feel like I’m coming to work,” Shane said. “If a doctor wrote my prescription, I didn’t get a rush. But if one of my defensive tackles makes a play on third-and-five or a third-down stop, I want to jump through the roof.”

So Shane got back to coaching. He coached at Richmond again from 2001 to 2003, he spent a season at Citadel and then coached at Elon University from 2005 to 2008.

That’s when he got the phone call that would put him back with his father on the football field.

Coaching with his father

Sitting in coach Paul Rhoads’ office during his interview in 2009, Wally was told there was one remaining coaching position left to fill.

“We started talking about it, and he said, ‘If you could hire who you wanted to, who would you hire?’” Wally said. “And I said, ‘You’re probably going to think I’m crazy, but I would hire my son Shane.’”

Rhoads decided to take some time to think about it but eventually called Shane to interview him.

Shortly after, Shane was offered the job and joined his father on the staff.

Since then, the two have shared the memories of bowl games and big wins as their defenses have led them to big victories, including one last season against No. 2 Oklahoma State.

“Those are certain things that you could coach all of your life and they’d never happen,” Shane said. “For it to happen for you in addition to coaching alongside your father, it’s unbelievable.”

Growing up, all Shane ever knew was football.

“When I was little, I had no idea. I thought everybody’s dad left at 7 a.m. and came home at 10:30 p.m. from August until January,” Shane said. “I didn’t know any different.”

Today, Shane is married to his wife Meagan and has two daughters, Lindsay and Brady. With football, Shane learned from his father. Now he has used Wally’s other life lessons in his own relationships.

“When he goes on the road, he often goes shopping and brings home the cutest little dresses for those girls,” Barbara said. “He builds his off time around their schedule because he wants to compensate for all the absence that there is in this profession.”

Barbara said Wally was a great father to Shane and their other two children, Patrick and Allison, despite his commitments on the football field.

Wally said he sees some of himself in who Shane is today.

“There are certain things that I see in him that I saw in myself years and years ago,” Wally said. “I think it’s the entire package coming together and I think he’s going to be successful and be a coordinator and a head coach hopefully one day.”

For now, Shane continues to spend time next to his father, following his football footsteps.