Fun-loving coach connecting with players
ARLINGTON — Myles Price’s eyes lit up.
In front of him, at Big 12 media days at AT&T Stadium, sat a microphone and a captive audience of reporters.
“This is my moment,” Price said Thursday as a wide grin overtook his face. “I think I should capitalize.”
He scooted his chair closer to the podium. He leaned in to the microphone.
He started singing.
“If I ain’t got nothing,” the Texas Tech junior wide receiver crooned. “I’ve got youuu.”
Price laughed it off. So did his roommate Caleb Rogers, an offensive lineman from Mansfield Lake Ridge who’d become accustomed to Price’s impromptu, one-man concerts.
That’s just how Joey McGuire likes it.
“We’re going to have some fun,” Texas Tech’s first-year head coach said about a halfhour later, with a smile as big as Price’s.
Hired in November, McGuire — a former assistant head coach at Baylor and state title-winning coach at Cedar Hill — has yet to coach a game for Texas Tech. His record as a college head coach, if you click on his Wikipedia page, reads 0-0. But if you ask the four players he brought along with him to Arlington, he hasn’t needed any of that to win them over.
Credit his high-energy, upbeat personality. Credit his Texas high school football roots as he’s found quick ways to connect with his current and future players.
“The first day he got hired, he actually hit up my (high school) head coach trying to get my number,” Price said. “He shot me a text like, ‘Hey, this is coach McGuire, I need to chop it up with you.’ Just him doing that, he didn’t have to do that at all.
He was looking for my number. You don’t see too many coaches come in, and first thing they’re worried about is getting one of the players’ numbers. That’s special to me.”
But that was back in November, when it may seem easy to put on a good face for a group of players you’re trying to win over, trying to keep from entering the transfer portal. This is July, months after spring ball, months after each player has had a chance to get a real taste of their new head coach.
Ask them, and they’ll say nothing has changed.
“You would think it stops,” Price said. “It never stops.”
Allow McGuire to explain why.
“I want their best part of the day to be (seeing) me when they come into the building,” he said. “I try to make sure that I have that energy, and I feed off of them. All these guys have high energy, but what we do is tough. Winning is tough. Practice, and the physical game we play, is tough. If you can’t have some fun with it, if you can’t enjoy each other, then it ain’t a whole lot of fun to come to work.”
Price and Rogers encountered McGuire in high school when he tried to recruit both to Baylor. And for both, Texas high school football is a key piece of their identities.
The same goes for their coach.
“Joey McGuire, he understands Texas high school football,” Rogers said. “He understands everything about it. And furthermore, he understands relationships. That’s why everybody knows him. That’s what separates him from other head coaches, in my opinion. Real relationships, that’s what he preaches about, that’s what he talks about. He’s that guy.”
McGuire is six years removed from coaching high school football, though it’s evident it remains a core part of his life and philosophy.
His opening remarks Thursday included a note about how he won two state titles — in 2013 and 2014 — at AT&T Stadium with Cedar Hill. He shouted out the Texas High School Coaches Association, newly minted Allen coach Lee Wiginton and the late Eddy Peach, who coached at Arlington Lamar. He decreed that Texas high school football is in his DNA, and that he’s a “high school coach who gets to coach college football.”
“He doesn’t have to try,” Texas Tech senior linebacker Tyree Wilson said. “Some coaches have to try to be a certain way; he can just be himself. If I was a recruit, he could sell me right when he walks in.”
Need evidence of that? Twenty-three players already have committed to Texas Tech in the class of 2023, and 247Sports.com ranks the class 16th best in the nation. Its class of 2022 ranked 46th in the country, and McGuire made quick inroads on the prospect trail just days after he was hired. The recently announced $200 million expansion to Texas Tech’s football facilities should only help with that.
It all serves the same purpose, one that McGuire hopes is realized this upcoming season: a Big 12 championship, won at AT&T Stadium.
“This place is really special,” McGuire said. “It’s one of my favorite places to coach, and it’s definitely a goal to get back here.”
McGuire shared a story from his Cedar Hill days, when the team used to walk out of the tunnel with a chainsaw. Before one of the team’s state championship game appearances, the folks at AT&T Stadium had asked that it remained turned off.
McGuire’s father had a different idea.
“My dad said, ‘You’re either going to be upset, or my son’s going to be upset,’ ” McGuire recalled. “And about that time, we were walking out (of the tunnel), and he said, ‘So I guess you’re going to be pissed off,’ and he cranked that thing up.” Talk about high energy. As it often does with McGuire, all roads lead back to Texas high school football. And the road he’s taken since then has led him back to AT&T Stadium.
And for all that’s changed on McGuire’s résumé since he last coached high school football, much about his own philosophy hasn’t. His goals haven’t, either. Winning the big one, at AT&T Stadium, is a priority, be it a UIL state title or a Big 12 championship.
That should play just fine. “He’s been a head coach before. He knows exactly what it takes,” Price said. “It’s nothing new. This is not his first rodeo.”