Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire debuts with Red Raiders, years after he started coming to watch them

Even with the spike in the price of gasoline this spring and summer, Joey McGuire can drive whatever vehicle he pleases Saturday when he heads to Jones AT&T Stadium for his first game as the Texas Tech football coach. Most mornings, he pulls up outside the Tech football building in a BMW sport utility vehicle. Such is the case with a man making $3 million in the first year at his dream job.

Which goes to show how far daring to pursue a dream can take a guy. When McGuire started making trips to Jones Stadium a little more than 30 years ago, he was pushing the accelerator on a 1979 Honda Accord down Interstate 20 West and up U.S. 84.

McGuire was a student at UT-Arlington, but his best friend from high school, Roger Corn, was a Texas Tech tight end. So two, three, maybe even four times a fall, McGuire would go dashing out of the Metroplex to catch a Tech game.

"I've had a few tickets in Post, Texas, driving a little bit too fast, trying to get to Lubbock," he said, grinning broadly. "But it is a great drive. You know, it's easy. You ain't turnin' a lot. You're going to get on 20 and get here."

McGuire has been wanting to get here — here being Texas Tech, coaching the Red Raiders — for a good portion of his coaching career, even if it wasn't always top of mind because he was preoccupied with winning games elsewhere. He certainly looked comfortable coaching at Cedar Hill from 2003 through 2016, leading the Longhorns to the playoffs every year, to four state-championship games and winning three.

But first he had to choose coaching over his original career plan, and then he had to have Texas Tech rub off on him.

McGuire has built up a remarkable amount of goodwill in only 10 months, dazzling Red Raiders' fans with his boyish energy and giving them something tangible — a highly rated recruiting class — before he's even coached his first game. That comes Saturday when Tech takes on Murray State in the season opener.

Gail McGuire never could have pictured this life for her teenage son, even if Joey had been an all-district linebacker one year at Crowley and an all-district offensive guard the next. One of his proudest moments was sharing that news with his dad.

It had come as a jolt when Crowley coach Gerald Jack told McGuire before his senior year that he was needed on offense. No problem, McGuire thought. He could play fullback. He could handle tight end.

"They go, 'Naw, you're going to play guard,' " McGuire said. "I really wasn't fired up about it, but I've always been a team player. I've always been what's best for the team, and how we can win. I think that comes from my dad."

Medical field or football field

When high-school football ended, McGuire appeared destined to go into medicine. His mother was a registered nurse, and several more family members were in the medical profession. While going to college at UT-Arlington, McGuire worked at All Saints Hospital in Fort Worth. He was making connections. He was making good money. He'd even interviewed for a job in pharmaceutical sales.

"I worked in the pharmacy, worked in the pharmacy surgery satellite," he said, "so I got to watch a lot of different surgeries. I always tell everybody, it was almost like a Friday night or like a game high, and so I was doing that and it just kind of wore off, that that's not what I loved and really didn't want to do. I always wanted to find something to do the rest of my life that I loved."

Torn between the career path that was known, sensible and could provide a comfortable living and the unpredictable, vagabond nature of coaching, McGuire chose the latter.

"When I figured that out and I told my mom, she was extremely disappointed," McGuire said. "Even though she is a diehard fan as far as any athletics, she wanted me to be a CRNA, an anesthetist. I was like, 'Mom, I'm going to be a coach. That's what I'm supposed to do.' And it's been good. It's been really good."

Former Texas Tech coach Mike Leach has won 150 games at three FBS programs after coming close to making a career out of law, for which he went to school. According to the story Leach tells, when he had reservations about his career choice, he wrote a letter to trial lawyer Gerry Spence, asking for advice. Spence answered that if Leach was consumed by the thought of practicing law, go for it; otherwise, pick something else.

That something else was coaching, which Leach began doing as a 15-year-old with a youth baseball team.

Like Leach, McGuire never played college football. Also like Leach, McGuire got a taste of coaching as a teenager.

When he would go home from the pharmacy, McGuire kept thinking back to how much he'd enjoyed being around his father's teams.

"I was coaching with my dad," he said. "My dad coached girls softball, baseball, of course football whenever I was growing up. So he coached us, and then whenever we got through playing, he coached everybody else. And so I was helping him and just kept going back to that: Man, I want to be a coach.

"I was feeling it at 18, 19, but I was still getting ready for nursing school. So I made that decision right before I turned 20, and thank God I did."

This spring, McGuire was inducted into the Texas High School Football Hall of Fame. He'd already been selected two years before for the Texas High School Coaches Association Hall of Honor in recognition of his 141-42 record at Cedar Hill, a high school with little history of success before his tenure.

His coaching credentials are established. As for how McGuire came to love Texas Tech, that goes back more than 30 years.

Following a friend

Roger Corn wasn't a highly decorated Texas Tech football player. You might say he was a Spike Dykes special: a young man who could have chosen a small college coming out of high school for a scholarship and more playing time, but he wanted to be part of a bigger program in a prestigious conference. So he walked on at Tech, eventually earned a scholarship and carved out enough of a role to letter in 1992 and 1993.

It's hard to say where McGuire might be these days had Corn not come to Tech. McGuire was born in Texarkana and given Texarkana's proximity to Fayetteville and Little Rock, Arkansas, the Razorbacks were his first college football exposure. They took the kid to War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock when he was 5. He even had the ubiquitous Hog hat.

He and Corn both arrived in Crowley as junior-high kids, Corn from Oklahoma, McGuire from next door to Arkansas.

"I really, really struggled whenever I moved to Crowley," McGuire said. "I loved all my friends. I think it's hard anyway to move, but it's really hard to move whenever you're in middle school. He moved to Crowley whenever he was in eighth grade, and for whatever reason, he kind of made everything (easier).

"We just connected instantly. We loved football and loved to hunt."

On holiday breaks in high school and college, they'd go on ski trips together. And when Corn decided to pursue his football dream in Lubbock, McGuire lived vicariously through his best friend. UT-Arlington discontinued its football program after the 1985 season, but McGuire had a good reason for staying: That's where he met his wife Debbie.

McGuire's sports fix came from "playing every intramural that you could play between softball and flag football."

And from those trips to Lubbock.

"I always tell everybody: I was coming to Tech," McGuire said. "Now, I wasn't thinking about walking on. Maybe a little bit, but I was going to come to Tech because my best friend was out here. We were extremely close. And that's when I met my wife."

McGuire had transferred to UTA after one semester at Tyler Junior College, and his future wife had come to UTA from Stephen F. Austin.

At some point, McGuire upgraded from the Honda Accord to a small Toyota pickup. Jones Stadium was still a regular destination. McGuire ticks off names: Jamie Gill, the quarterback from Hurst Bell. Marcus Washington, the defensive end. John "Dump Truck" Runnels, a defensive tackle whose sons McGuire would someday coach at Cedar Hill.

McGuire wasn't a Tech student, so come game day he had to be resourceful.

"Usually, once I got here with Roger, there would be all his buddies, if they weren't playing," McGuire said. "So I'd usually sit with them if I could."

One friend missing

When Joey McGuire turned 51 this month, Texas Tech fans took note of his Aug. 6 birthday — 806, same as the area code — and took it as a sign he was destined to coach in Lubbock. When the Red Raiders kick off the season, a flock of family and friends will be on hand — newly made friends and ones who have known the coach for years.

One of the best will be missing. Roger Corn died in January 2020 after an illness. He had just turned 49.

"His body just kind of started shutting down on him," said McGuire, who spoke at the funeral. "It was tough, because he's got three boys. One's graduated and the other two are in college, so it was tough."

In 2003, when McGuire was elevated to head coach at Cedar Hill, he tried to hire Corn as his offensive line coach. Corn, coaching at their old high school, decided instead to go into school administration. He eventually became principal at Crowley.

Those who know both men can't help but wonder what Roger would think of where Joey is today. They have a good idea.

When Tech hired McGuire in early November, the coach said his cell phone pinged with congratulatory text messages from Corn's mother, his wife, his sister, his older brother and his oldest son.

"And then I've got a group text with probably seven of my high-school buddies," McGuire said. "In the group text, every one of them was like, 'Corn's, Corn Dog's proud of you.' It was really, really cool getting those messages from those people, people I love.

"It was tough to lose him, but it was really neat to know everyone said, 'Man, he's looking down and he's going to be fired up to see you on that sideline.' "

It starts on Saturday, this time with a much shorter drive to Jones Stadium.

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Texas Tech football head coach Joey McGuire debuts with Red Raiders, years after he started coming to watch them