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By Michael A. Lough
The Sports Report
centralgasports@gmail.com

Andy McCollum has been around. A lot and awhile.

Since starting in 1981, he’s been a head coach and helped a program transition from 1-AA to 1-A, and been an assistant at two places in Texas and two in North Carolina, an analyst in frigid western New York, and with nearly a decade down the road from his native Marietta, at Georgia Tech.

Now, at a tiny place he knew very little about, Monday night’s Macon Touchdown Club speaker has found a home.

He was an analyst at the University of Buffalo, when little Sewanee, also known as the University of the South, inquired.

“The first call I made was to my wife, who didn’t go to Buffalo with me, that’s a whole’ nother story. I called her and told her I was coming home, hoping to hear her excitement about it.”

Sewanee is a Division III school about half an hour northwest of Chattanooga. The current undergraduate enrollment for the charter member of the SEC – it left after eight years, in 1940 – is about 1,800.

McCollum’s wife did research: “They hadn’t won in about 20 years.”

Helping him make the decision: “I looked in my rearview mirror and there was about three foot of snow back there.”

The beauty of the campus caught his eye, but the clincher was his meeting with a small panel of returning players. He took his tie off and wanted to chat.

They explained what the situation was like, what they hoped for, and McCollum told them what he was about.

“The AD came and got me, I walked out the door tog to get in his truck and (return to) the hotel,” he said. “Every one of those kids came out, running out of the door, and hugged me bye.

“The AD told me, ‘Coach, we’ve had five other guys interview, and that ain’t happened yet.”

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He was sold.

“We won the Orange Bowl at Georgia Tech, I’ve coached at the highest level. I enjoyed that. I love recruiting. I love making a difference in kids’ lives. I love beating people in recruiting. I still got five from Georgia Tech still playing in the NFL.

“I just want to make a difference.”

He took over a program of only 38 players and basically no staff. Well, soon enough he didn’t have a staff.

“I fired all of ‘em,” he said. “ ‘Coach, that’s the way we’ve always done it here.’ OK, how’s that worked out for ya? Not very well.”

Now he has 76 players, half of whom are freshmen, with a little more than a dozen from Georgia. Peach Staters include freshman defensive lineman Desmond Gilbert of Dublin and sophomore running back Tate Turner from ACE.

There has been an immediate buy-in.

“We went on the road and beat a team, first road win in five years,” he said. “The kids rode back on that bus and have never been on a bus ride back with winning.

“This past week, we beat Millsap who’s supposed to be good, and they came out all cocky, and I love it. We beat them. First conference win in five years. Was the first time Sewanee has won back to back games in 10 years. First time we beat this team in 18 years.”

McCollum video time stamp
000 – 5:00: Intro, opening remarks, acknowledgements
5:30: Taking a new job at a tiny place, and what he faced
12:00 - Philosophies, beliefs
15:00 - Coaching
18:30 - Coaches turned TV talkers
20:00 - Turning around Sewanee, bus rides, raising standards
21:20 - ‘I walked in there and fired everybody when I got there’ and the banquet two days later
24:00 – Why try Sewanee
26:00 – Q&A, general, to 35:00

In a college football world motivated by money and driven by transferring, the simple joy he saw from his players was big.

“They want to be successful,” McCollum said. “I got to watch it this past Saturday. It couldn’t come at a better time.”

McCollum had some friendly faces in front of him. He and Dublin head coach Roger Holmes have been best friends for decade, and he’s known Dublin assistant and former Washington County head coach Joel Ingram for years. Linebacker/special teams coach Brad Wallace attended with his colleagues.

Not known for subtlety or holding back, McCollum was a little more reserved than in the past, but no less passionate.

‘They asked me when I came and took this job, ‘Coach, we don’t want a guy that’s ready to retire, this be a retirement job,’” he said. “I said, ‘Do y’all think I’d be in Buffalo for two years if I was ready to retire?’”

McCollum thinks he has at least five years left.

“I have as much energy and enthusiasm as I had 20, 30 years ago. I can’t move as fast, I can’t chase ‘em around, but there’s not a younger coach gonna outcoach us, and I love these kids.”

He’s well known for his recruiting energy, and he has made Georgia a priority everywhere he’s been. Sometimes, his boss would be a little skeptical, like when McCollum was all fired up about an overlooked kid from South Georgia.

“Paul wouldn’t let me sign him,” McCollum said of former Georgia Tech head coach Paul Johnson. “I thought he was the best player in the state of Georgia, from Cairo, Ga.”

The end of the recruiting period came, and Tech lost a commitment to Georgia. So Johnson OK’d McCollum signing 5-11, 220-pounder P.J. Davis.

“He was mad at me,” McCollum said. “They came up. Happiest family I’ve ever seen in my life. They’re all crying.

“That little 5-9 linebacker comes here and starts four years, All-ACC, signed with the Jacksonville Jaguars. He was told he was too dumb and too small. He got a degree from Georgia Tech.”

It wasn’t a total Hallmark story.

“Now, was he a pain in the tail for about a year or two?” McCollum said. “Yep, yep. He was shooting fireworks out his dorm room over the interstate one time. I got chewed out about that one. ‘Your boy, that’s your boy.’

“OK, wait till Saturday.”