by Ryan McGee
Sam and I continued to get sideline credentials and I continued to take photos. It was at Duke’s Wallace Wade Stadium, the place where Pa-Pa had taken Dad to his first college football game, that I first experienced the magic of the press box. At halftime, the local photographers said, “Come with us, kid,” and we marched up through the grandstand like royalty. We arrived to the press box and they gave us boxed lunches that included a hot dog and a pulled pork sandwich, with a bag of potato chips, a giant chocolate chip cookie, and all the Pepsi a kid could drink. As we sat around tables eating, Mike Krzyzewski walked by, coming off his first winning season next door at Cameron Indoor Stadium, and said hello to the table. So did Miss North Carolina. Then we descended back to the field for the second half.
Sam
It became such a regular part of our lives that my friends had to remind me how crazy it all really was. I remember one of my best friends in middle school saying to me, “So, you’re going to the game at UNC this weekend, you were at the game at Virginia last weekend, and you were the ball boy at an NC State practice yesterday? You realize this isn’t normal, right?”
But for us, it was.
Those friends were all-in. The two most exciting moments of the season for college football officials and their families were the delivery of the fall schedule, which back then arrived via the late summer mail, and the news of whether or not that season would end with a trip to a bowl game, a phone call that came the week after the regular season had ended and the bowl invitations to teams had become official. I still remember the pride that swelled in my chest when I was sitting in Mr. Gaines’ 12th grade Western Civilizations class at Travelers Rest High School and a student office assistant appeared in the doorway with a phone message for me. I went to the door and the note simply read, We’re going to the Gator Bowl! Michigan State vs. Georgia. I announced it to the class, amid much applause and high fives as I returned to my seat.
Dad always wore a sweatband on his left wrist, underneath a black digital watch that he used to keep the on-field clock. It was practical, yes. But it was also a fantastic visual cue that separated him from the other officials on the crew. To this day, when a game pops up on ESPN Classic or YouTube, Sam and I spot Dad immediately, thanks to that black-and-white left wrist. Our classmates and friends also picked up on that Dr. McGee trademark, for better or worse, when he was officiating a game involving their favorite team. They would also mimic his very distinct lean-forward running style. In college, my dorm roommates would take to the intramural fields running in a line, all leaned forward doing their best Dr. McGee impersonation.
Sam
One Saturday, those same college friends of Ryan’s were all in town with him and we headed down to Death Valley for Duke at Clemson. We had Pa-Pa with us.
Keep in mind, this is the same Pa-Pa who was in attendance for Dad’s first game at Clemson a year earlier and the same man who took little Jerry McGee to his first college football game at Duke…because Marshall Caddell was a proud Methodist and thusly a Duke Blue Devils fan.
Sam
We didn’t have the usual bad free officials’ tickets. We had skybox seats from a food service company that Dad worked with at his day job. This was really before you saw skyboxes anywhere, but Death Valley had them before everyone else, of course. The game started and I asked Pa-Pa who he was rooting for, and he said, “Well, these Clemson people are taking really good care of us. So, I think it’s only right to root for Clemson.”
But halfway through the game, Duke was hanging in there. Pa-Pa had been chatting everyone up, but now he was getting kind of quiet. I said, “You still rooting for Clemson?”
Pa-Pa shook his head no. He was done denying his Duke roots. He said to me, “It’s a sad frog who can’t pull for his own pond.”
Pa-Pa and my friends alike would start calling the house every summer, asking, “Your Dad get his schedule yet?” We’d spend those summers watching him studying his rulebook by the neighborhood swimming pool, and by mid-June he would always start getting twitchy. “Man, the schedules should be coming out soon, right?” When his game assignments finally did arrive, typically the entire year all at once, it was all about scanning that list for big games and new locations.
I can distinctly remember the excitement that came in ’87 when UNC at Oklahoma was on the list.
Dad
When coaches would fill out their postgame evaluations, they would give you a grade from 0 to 10. And, big surprise, the losing coach would often give you a zero and the winning coach would give you a 10.
But the best part of those evaluation forms was that there was a comments section at the bottom. We worked that Carolina–Oklahoma game and UNC was pretty bad, but Oklahoma was a machine. They were No. 1 in the country and they had Keith Jackson and Ricky Dixon and Jamelle Holieway at quarterback. They won that game 28–0.
The evaluation comes in from Barry Switzer, head coach at Oklahoma. He gave us great grades. But then he wrote at the bottom: “Don’t ever send Booker and McGee back out here. Next time send Billy the Kid and Jesse James, because at least I know they’re going to rob me.”
Where there were open weekends in Dad’s ACC schedule, he would quickly fill them with dates at smaller schools, in one part to keep busy, but also to help mentor young officiating talent at the lower levels, just as had been done for him not too long ago. The most frequent destination was Statesboro, Georgia, home of Georgia Southern University. The Eagles were the Oklahoma Sooners of I-AA football, a wishbone-powered running machine that reached the national championship game four times in five years and won three titles.
Their head coach was Erk Russell, arguably the most famous defensive assistant coach in college football history as the mastermind behind Georgia’s “Junkyard Dawg” defense. Russell was known for head-butting players, smashing his exposed bald dome against their helmets until there was blood trickling down his forehead. He held so much sway over UGA that he even worked with the marching band to come up with a playlist to get the crowd fired up, injecting Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” between the hedges whenever the Dawgs got a big stop.
Erk Russell was a character. He also worked very hard to find any advantage he could on the field.
Dad
We were in the locker room there at Georgia Southern, having our pregame meeting. It was a little place and had one bathroom right off the main room. When we’d get to the stadium, they would just give us a key to that locker room and tell us to make sure to give it back before we left that evening. We’re having our meeting and we’re talking about the tendencies of the teams and what we needed to keep an eye on. It was the first game of the year, so we were also discussing new rules changes, how they might affect the game early on. That kind of thing.
We start wrapping up the meeting and all of the sudden the bathroom door opens. Erk Russell comes walking out. He acted all surprised to see us, “Oh, hey, sorry, guys, I didn’t know you’d already be in here. Just needed to go to the bathroom and I needed some privacy. Have a great game.” Well, hell, he’d obviously been in there listening to our meeting.
I was back down there at the very end of the season. We sat down to have our meeting, and I realized that Coach Russell was in there again. So, I said, “You know what, guys? Let’s head outside and take a look at the field…” and when we left, I locked the door.
We started getting close to kickoff, and you could feel everyone asking, “Have you seen Coach Russell?” Finally, we went back to the locker room for one last pit stop before the game started. When I unlocked the door, Erk Russell came flying out of there and headed straight for the field. “Oh, hey, sorry, Coach. We didn’t know you were in there!”
I came back to Georgia Southern one more time before he retired in 1989. He was not hiding in the bathroom this time.
We had also moved again, right into the heart of the same legendary league packed w
ith Georgia Southern’s biggest rivals. Dad was now vice president of development at Furman University, member of the Southern Conference, the grandparent conference of the SEC where the Paladins battled the likes of Marshall University, Western Carolina, and Appalachian State. No sooner had we moved to Greenville, South Carolina, than I found my way into the press box, keeping statistics for the Furman Paladin Radio Network. And while Dad was on the sidelines at Louisville (“Howard Schnellenberger really liked to haze young officials”) and Florida State (“Burt Reynolds was a really nice guy”), Sam was working the sidelines of Paladin Stadium as a ball boy.
Sam
I took that very seriously. In my mind, I was just like Dad. I had to get my mechanics down perfectly. Keep in mind, one of Dad’s duties was always to get game balls on and off the field, so now I was on the other side of that, and I knew just how important my job was. When did you know Dad was really on top of a game? When a guy would break a long touchdown run and Dad would still beat him to the goal line. Anticipate the play and stay ahead of it. That was my approach, too. I was never prouder than when a long play would happen and the field judge would be way downfield, had just signaled, and he would look way back up the field for a new football, but instead he would find me standing right beside him.
That might sound a little obsessive to some people, but man, I was doing my part.
Sam also developed Dad’s thick skin when it came to being screamed at. The Furman coaching staff was packed with staffers who also went on to win rings at schools throughout college football. Bobby Johnson, the future head coach at Vanderbilt, has always been revered as a gentleman of the game. But let’s just say he wasn’t very gentle on the ball boys at Furman.
The Paladins won the 1988 NCAA I-AA national championship, defeating Georgia Southern. Unfortunately, the game was played in Pocatello, Idaho, so only Dad was able to make the trip. But it was a thrill to watch the game on ESPN that night. And it was an even bigger thrill when Doug Holliday, the radio voice of the Paladins, thanked me over the air for my stats work during the regular season. Years later, Dad even gave me his national championship ring, engraved with mcgee vp on the side.
Sam
I think it’s time to finally get this off my chest. I should have that ring. I was on the field that year.
It’s a fair point. But that doesn’t mean I’m giving it to him. Besides, he should have won his own the following season, when Furman was once again marching through the NCAA playoffs and hosted Stephen F. Austin in the national semifinals. There was a rare Upstate South Carolina blizzard that day, so Sam and the ball boys were working extra hard. So were the I-AA officials assigned to the game—though as they learned at game’s end, perhaps not hard enough. The 15-year old ball boy with the extensive knowledge of the rulebook made sure of that, especially when it came to onside kicks.
Sam
This is in the closing seconds of the game. Furman had just scored and trailed 21–19. We had a great long placekicker on that team, so if Furman gets the ball back and completes just one pass, this guy, Glen Connally, is more than likely going to make the game-winner and determine who is moving on to play for the national championship.
Everyone sets up for the onside kick and I see that the field judge isn’t lined up 10 yards downfield from the kicker. With the snow he was confused and had lined up at 15 yards instead. So, I’m going to help this guy out. I ran over to the correct spot and said to him, “I’m standing at 10 yards! I’m standing at 10 yards!” The ball is kicked and Furman recovers and they say, nope, it didn’t go far enough, Stephen F. Austin’s ball.
Now I am standing at the spot where the ball was recovered and I am saying to the guy, “It went 12 yards! This is 12 yards right here!” And he actually engaged me. He looked at me and said, “No, no, it was only eight yards, this is the line.” Now I’m just screaming, “No! No! THIS is the line! Look, we can step it off from where he kicked it. I’m at the 45, you’re at midfield.”
In a complete role reversal, Dad was there as a spectator, his regular season over, and was watching Sam down on the field.
Dad
It was obvious that the crew was confused because they huddled on the field to discuss it. We were in the press box with my boss, the Furman president, and I had just told him that I didn’t think this was going to go our way. Then I looked over on the sideline and there was someone jumping up and down and pointing down to the correct spot. It was Sam.
Sam
The game ended, and I actually followed the white hat off the field. “The ball went 10 yards!” He looked at me like I had two heads. Who the hell is this 15-year old? Wasn’t he a ball boy? And they ran in the locker room. Season over.
Dad
We were watching the officials leave and I thought, Oh damn, Sam is following them off the field! I looked over at Hannah and she was watching him, too. She just looked at me like, “Well, there goes our boy.”
One week later, Stephen F. Austin lost 37–34 in the national title game at Georgia Southern, after which Erk Russell retired from coaching. No word on whether or not he was hiding in the officials’ locker room toilet during the pregame.
Coach’s Timeout with Vince Dooley
“I would say that there was about a 98 percent chance that Erk was eavesdropping on your father’s crew down in Statesboro.”
It is 12:30 pm on December 7, 2019, in Atlanta’s World Congress Center, and I am sitting onstage alongside Vince Dooley, former longtime Georgia head coach, athletic director, and boss to Erk Russell. Coach Dooley is about to be a guest on Marty & McGee, the show I am fortunate enough to cohost with my friend Marty Smith on ESPN Radio and the SEC Network. In a few hours, Dooley’s former team will be on the field next door at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, playing LSU in the SEC Championship Game. But right now, we are making small talk until the production truck says they are rolling.
“Your father officiated my last game as head coach, did he not?”
He did. It was that 1989 Gator Bowl contest against Michigan State, the one I had made such a proud presentation about in Western Civ class.
“I let my successor, Ray Goff, call that game however he wanted, and we were throwing it all over the place, and so was Michigan State. We made Andre Rison a millionaire in that game,” he said of the Spartans wide receiver who caught nine passes for 252 yards and a trio of touchdowns. Four months later, Rison was taken in the first round of the NFL draft. “We had a touchdown lead late in that game and I remember telling the official on my sideline, ‘I can’t take this throwing it. I’m a nervous wreck! This is my last few minutes on the job, so we are going to run the ball!’ and we did. Was that your father I was talking to?”
I told him no. Dad was across the field that night, on the Michigan State sideline chatting with the other head coach, George Perles. Dooley was likely talking to Dr. Bud Robertson, who was also in his last game, closing out a distinguished 16-year officiating career in the ACC.
“That’s right!” the coach exclaimed. “You know, Bud and I became great friends. I reached out to him when I was doing some Civil War research. Only then did I realize he had been a football official.”
Dr. James I. “Bud” Robertson was perhaps the foremost historian on that war, ever. Robertson was the author of more than 40 books, including the seminal biography of Stonewall Jackson. He was a professor at Virginia Tech for 44 years, teaching more than 25,000 students, where he would see Vince’s brother, Virginia Tech head coach Bill Dooley, on campus. In the 1970s, he’d officiated Bill Dooley’s games when he was head coach at UNC. In 1987–88, he officiated Dooley’s games at Wake Forest. “Dr. Bud” held three college degrees, earned professor emeritus status and was considered for the Pulitzer Prize. In 1961, he was appointed by John F. Kennedy as executive director of the United States Civil War Centennial Commission. He was only 30 years old.
Vince Dooley became emotional
as he spoke, because Dr. Robertson had passed away just that week. I made him laugh by telling him about the night before the Gator Bowl, New Year’s Eve, when the officiating families walked Jacksonville Riverwalk together and Dr. Bud the academician wore a self-made crown of neon Glo-sticks bought from a street vendor, his face totally deadpan.
Vince Dooley laughed and asked who else was on that crew. I told him it was Dad, the soon-to-be university president; Mauzy, the self-made millionaire; Bill Booker, the lifelong high school teacher and coach; attorney and former Clemson lineman Clark Gaston; construction mogul Bill Jamerson; and financial advisor Billy Lovett, once Maryland football’s all-time leading rusher, who went on to officiate a Super Bowl.
“Wow. Such an impressive, impressive group of men. But you know what?” Dooley said as our interview had ended and he grabbed my hand for a goodbye shake. “There were about 80,000 people there at my last game that night, and they were all completely convinced that those seven guys were the biggest idiots in the building.”
Then the College Football Hall of Famer winked at me.
“Unless we had blown that lead. Then they would have all been ranked behind me.”
6. The Wall of Screaming
Vince Dooley wasn’t typically a sideline screamer. The reality is that during Dad’s four decades of sideline experience, very few of the coaches were the kind of guys who spent entire games ranting and hollering about everything that happened.
Dad
It was usually the complete opposite of that, especially when you were working with coaches and staff members you had seen over and over again for years. A lot of times, they would give me a heads-up on what was coming, maybe even just a whisper before a play, “Hey McGee, we are about to throw this pass directly at the spot where you are standing, you might want to take a couple of steps back.”
One day at Georgia Tech, a team that ran the ball on every single play, one of the offensive coaches casually walked over and said, “Be on your horse for the first three plays. We are going to throw the living hell out of it.” They did it, too, like three straight bombs downfield, and I was ready for it. I was in perfect position on every play. In the postgame, the evaluator was Dan Post, a guy I’d officiated with for years. He says, “God almighty, you were on top of all those early pass plays. You beat the receiver downfield on every one of them! Did you know that was coming?”
