Florida Gators

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – In a coaching career that started 25 years ago at Langston University, Garrick McGee made 11 different stops prior to coming to UF last season as a behind-the-scenes analyst.

Along the way, McGee served as a head coach (UAB), offensive coordinator (four schools) and in the NFL (quality control with Jacksonville). When former Gators quality-control analyst Ken Zampese returned to the NFL last season as quarterbacks coach for the Washington Football Team, he spoke with McGee about the Florida opening.

McGee's interest was piqued when Zampese told him how Gators head coach Dan Mullen utilized the position.

"He was putting offensive coaches with the defensive staff,'' Zampese told him.

"That was really intriguing to me because I've spent over 20 years coaching offense, and at this point in my career, I could potentially go work for a defensive staff and watch [defensive coordinator Todd] Grantham," McGee said. "Really learn the details about how defenses go about their business."

Soon, Grantham reached out to McGee – they worked together at Louisville for a couple of seasons under Bobby Petrino, where McGee recruited future Heisman Trophy winner and NFL MVP Lamar Jackson – and McGee prepared to make stop No. 12.

"The timing was right for me,'' McGee said.

At the time, McGee didn't know another opportunity with the Gators would surface months later. This one is of a higher profile: coaching quarterbacks at a school that has produced three Heisman-winning quarterbacks and a finalist for the game's top award last season.

Mullen, looking to replace former offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Brian Johnson after Johnson left to join the Philadelphia Eagles in late January, needed little time to make the move. Not only had McGee been a part of the program since last season, Mullen had known McGee for more than a decade.

While he was head coach at Mississippi State, Mullen invited McGee and his offensive staff at UAB to campus to talk ball.

"He's done this a long time,'' Mullen said Monday. "I've known Garrick for a long time, watched his players, watched how he's developed guys, watched his offensive knowledge."

When dissecting McGee's career, you must trace back much further than 1996 when McGee was hired as an assistant at Langston, the only historically Black college or university in Oklahoma.

This trip into the past starts around 1981 when Larry McGee, Garrick's late father, became head coach at Booker T. Washington High in Tulsa. Larry McGee replaced legendary Hornets coach Ed Lacy and took Garrick along for the ride. In his nine seasons as head coach, Larry won 90 of 112 games and won a state championship in 1984. In his final season in 1989, Garrick was the team's quarterback and an all-state defensive back.

But well before Garrick was old enough to play for the Hornets, he was part of the program.

"I would go to the meetings with my dad and sit in there with all the coaches,'' he said. "I never got bored. As an 8-year-old, I could sit in there. It was something I was just interested in. I always knew [I wanted to coach]."
 
As Garrick climbed the coaching ladder and established himself as a well-respected offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in the college game, whenever he talked to reporters for the first time at his new job, Larry's name seemed to come up in the conversation. Larry McGee died in October 2007 at age 59, taken too soon by cancer's relentless grip.

Larry was head coach at Manuel High in Kansas City when he joined the staff at Washington as an assistant in 1976. He was promoted to head coach five years later as he and wife Saundra, Garrick's mother, made Tulsa their home. After stepping down as football coach, Larry later served as the school's athletic director.

"He's in the Hall of Fame there,'' Garrick said. "He did a really good job maintaining a program that was built. We take a lot of pride in that program."

When news spread of Larry's passing more than 13 years ago, many of his former players at Washington gathered in the family's front yard to pay their respects and share memories. Guy Troupe, who played for McGee and later served as the NFL's Director of Player Programs, told the Tulsa World of his former coach's impact.

"He was a father figure in the lives of guys who didn't have a father," Troupe said. "He said the game is important to those who play it, but the lessons learned from it are much more important."

Shortly after a recent practice ended, Garrick McGee was asked how his father's lessons continue to impact him on a daily basis as he spends his first spring as the Gators quarterbacks coach, tutoring a group that includes Emory Jones, Anthony Richardson, Jalen Kitna and Carlos Del Rio-Wilson.

He was quick with the answer.

"He taught me what coaching football is all about,'' Garrick said. "It's about developing relationships with people and it's about the development of a young person. And you use football to develop that person. Your job is to send the parent back, in three or four years, a developed person, someone who is ready for the world. That's what my dad always preached to me on what we're doing as coaches. That's something I value.

"I don't have these stories that my dad was harder on me than everybody else. He was hard on everybody. I was just the quarterback and I was his son. Sometimes a good day is when you've got a kid, and he comes to your meeting, you can tell there is something bothering him, and mentally he's not in a good place to go out on the practice field and produce and perform, but he's the starting quarterback, and if the starting quarterback shows up at practice with bad energy, that's going to flatten the whole practice. You find a way in the meeting to get him out of that funk, and he ends up going onto the practice field and having a great practice and the team has a great practice. Those are great days as a coach."

McGee relates to his position group easily since he was once in their shoes. McGee played quarterback in college, first at Arizona State, and then at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M and Oklahoma, where he spent the final two seasons (1994 and '95) of his playing career.

McGee is working to instill the same qualities his father taught him in UF's quarterbacks room as the Gators seek to replace 2020 Heisman Trophy finalist Kyle Trask.

"At this level, if you're going to have a chance to be great, it starts with leadership,'' he said. "The programs that stay on top, and the programs that are built to keep moving forward, they can transition between quarterbacks. That's what we're pressing for now. We've recruited well. We have two guys that are very talented kids, have arm talent, they can run, they understand the system, they have the trust and respect from their teammates.

"What we have to do is go from being Kyle's backup to taking control of the team and getting the team feed off our energy level and the way we go about our business."

If those words sound like they came from a coach's son, they did.