South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Touhy a helping hand
Associate athletics director an important cog as Knights approach Big 12 status
With UCF’s college football season right around the corner and fall camp already underway, SJ Tuohy is grinding.
Tuohy, who is associate athletics director and chief of football operations, spends
15 hours a day scrambling to make sure the
120-member Knights football team is fed, clothed, equipped and gets to where it needs to be.
It may be the team’s job to move the ball, but it’s Tuohy’s job to move the team.
“SJ is involved with everything that happens within our football program,’’ UCF coach Gus Malzahn said in an email. “He makes certain every essential event is scheduled, coordinated and executed, whether it involves players, coaches, staff or some combination.’’
It’s a big role — and especially bigger as UCF prepares to enter the Big 12 conference next year.
“The Big 12 has been exciting,’’ Tuohy recently told a group of high school students at WPC Camp Orlando, a training camp for scholastic journalists. “Making sure we raise enough money to get there, forging the relationships and getting to know the people in the Big 12 has been my job. We’re new to the conference, so there’s a lot of logistic-based stuff that goes into it.’’
Said Malzahn: “The move to the Big 12 will involve learning a new set of opponents and venues and how a different league does business — and SJ will be right in the middle of making sure that transition works smoothly for all of us.”
But Tuohy told the students his busy life is about a lot more than planes, trains and automobiles. It’s more than roster management, working with the media, making sure a venue has video for its Jumbotron, creating meal plans for the team and filing complicated expense reports.
It’s about being a brother. And that’s a familiar role. Touhy is brother of Michael Oher, who played eight seasons in the NFL for the Baltimore Ravens, Tennessee Titans and Carolina Panthers and was the subject of the 2009 hit film “The Blind Side.” The movie is the real-life story of Touhy’s Memphis family, who adopted Oher, a homeless, traumatized kid who grows up to be a football star. Touhy was played in the film by young actor Jae Head.
Touhy, now 29, was a sophomore in high school when the film came out. He said he didn’t realize until after he graduated, left Memphis and went to college the impact the film had on audiences and the name recognition the film brought to him and his family.
“It put me on a platform, so you have to be careful to represent your family in a positive way. It also gives you more opportunities to help people,’’ Tuohy said.
Today, he added, “Ninety-five percent of the people who bring it up recognize the name from the movie. If I’m in a restaurant, people will say, ‘Like the kid from the movie.’ But they don’t recognize me because it was an actor in the movie, right?’’
What the film portrayed — his family’s values of hard work, deep Christian faith, treating people with respect and giving everyone a chance — is what informs who he is and what he does today in his role at UCF.
In addition, he and his family run the Memphis-based Making It Happen Foundation, which provides opportunities for children in need around the country. The
foundation promotes adoption and helps cover adoption fees so children in foster care can be placed in forever homes. The foundation also works with at-risk schools, providing supplies to teachers and students, and brings foster families to Disney World for all-expenses-paid vacations.
“Our mission with the foundation is to give people a chance who don’t have it who should have it,’’ Tuohy said.
The foundation is a family affair. Tuohy’s dad Sean, mom Leigh Anne and sister Collins serve on the board. Leigh Anne was portrayed in the film by Sandra Bullock, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress for the role in 2010. Tuohy remains close to his family — literally.
His parents live in Central Florida. “My mom bothers the heck out of me, like most moms do,’’ he said with a laugh. “But I love my mom. The relationship is great. I’m almost 30 years old and she’s
still a helicopter parent. I moved closer to where they live down here, which is great. I’m far enough away where she can’t just pop in all the time — about an hour away. But she still pops in.’’
Tuohy, who began working at UCF last year, said his family’s values are at the core of what he does. Bringing people together — the 120 football players and a coaching and support staff of 40 — to achieve their goals is his job.
“The most tedious part of the job is reconciling expenses and putting in all the budget codes and expensing it with the business office,’’ Tuohy said. “The spending-money part is really fun, swiping the card and buying new jerseys and new gear and staying in nice hotels and the food. But then two weeks later on the back end when you have to reconcile it, that part stinks.
“It’s also really cool to see plans come together for that many people.’’
Tuohy has ambitions to be an athletic director for a university one day, but that’s not the end goal. It all goes back to being a brother to his players, fellow staff members and anyone in the organization he can help.
“If I could be known for one thing, I certainly would hope it would not be an accomplishment,’’ Tuohy said. “I would want it to be relationships. I would want to be known as someone who made it happen for someone who needed it. I want to be known as the guy who’s there for them.’’