Tech coach was on O’leary’s staff for 11 years at UCF.

Brent Key has coached a game in Raymond James Stadium, site of this month’s Gasparilla Bowl that pits his Georgia Tech Yellow Jack- ets against Central Florida on Dec. 22.

On Jan. 9, 2017, Key was the offensive line coach at Alabama for the national championship game at the Tampa, Florida, venue. Key and the Crimson Tide lost to Clemson 35-31.

Two years later, Key left

Alabama to return to his alma mater as an assistant coach. He took over the Jackets as an interim head coach in 2022 and then became the program’s full-time coach a little more than a year ago.

Now he returns to the venue that primarily serves as the home of the NFL’S Tampa Bay Buccaneers, under much different circumstances than his last trip. Key is trying to get the Jack- ets to their first winning season since 2018 and first bowl victory since 2016.

A win for Key in 2017 would have garnered the ultimate prize. A win on Dec. 22 would further cement the notion that his current pro- gram is headed in the right direction.

“Excited to go down to Tampa and play a quality opponent,” he said Sunday. “I want to see our team not be satisfied with just getting to a bowl game. I want them to keep that hunger, to keep building on what we have built on, really, the last second part of the season of building this football team into what we want it to be.”

Not only will the venue of the Gasparilla Bowl be famil- iar to Key, the opposing uni- forms will be, too.

Key left his assistant coach- ing job at Western Caro- lina in 2004 to join George O’leary’s coaching staff at UCF in 2005. O’leary, of course, won 52 games with the Jackets from 1994-2001 and Key played for the for- mer Tech coach at the end of last century.

After one season as a grad- uate assistant with O’leary at UCF, Key coached the program’s tight ends, running backs and offensive line and was the recruiting coor- dinator and special teams coordinator throughout his tenure. He was promoted to assistant head coach in 2012 and offensive coordi- nator in 2014.

When O’leary resigned at the end of the 2015 season, it was expected by many that Key would be promoted to take O’leary’s place as head coach. Instead, UCF report- edly gave Key $700,000 in lieu of an opportunity to become a head coach for the first time, and gave the job to Scott Frost. Key moved on to coach the offensive line at Alabama from 2016- 18 before returning to Tech.

Key didn’t have much to say Sunday when asked about the unique matchup between his alma mater and former employer, deflecting the question to speak about meeting his wife while working in Orlando, Florida, and adopting his oldest dog, Bear, while living there.

The former Tech offensive lineman did note that some of his former UCF players attended the Jackets’ regular-season finale Nov. 25 against top-ranked Georgia, players who may have been part of UCF bowl games with Key — like the 2009 St. Petersburg Bowl, the 2012 Beef O’brady’s Bowl or the 2014 St. Petersburg Bowl — all played at Tropicana Field, 20 miles from Tech’s 2023 bowl site of Raymond James Stadium.