Leap of Faith: McGuire Left Cedar Hill for Baylor
8/16/2017 12:00:00 AM | Football
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By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Foundation
Debbie McGuire had heard her husband say "no" to college coaching offers so many times, the day Joey McGuire was leaving to visit with Matt Rhule at Baylor, she asked, "Why are you going? You're never going to leave Cedar Hill."
This was different, though.
"I just had a feeling," said McGuire, who was 141-42 in 14 seasons at Cedar Hill, leading a program that had never won a playoff game to state championships in 2006, 2013 and '14. "It just aligns with everything we try to do. Everything is so relationship-driven. Everything at Cedar Hill was relationship-driven. I just believe in that. I've got to be around the players, I've got to be around the kids. And, we're lucky that we're able to do that."
McGuire, who took a leap of faith with a coach he didn't know before this year, said he tells his former Cedar Hill coaches that Baylor is "like Cedar Hill in Waco."
"I've only been on one staff that didn't get along in 23, going on 24 years," said McGuire, who coaches the Baylor tight ends on an offensive staff that includes co-coordinators Jeff Nixon and Glenn Thomas, receivers coach Bob Bicknell and veteran offensive line coach George Deleone. "This staff is so much fun. Kids are going to be kids, and I'm going to gravitate to them because that's what I love. But, if you're coming to work every day, and you don't really like each other and you can't laugh at each other and laugh at yourself . . . this staff is totally opposite. We have a lot of fun together, and Coach Rhule sets that tone."
For Rhule, hiring McGuire might have been one of his biggest coups. He had turned down Texas at least once and had offers from current Arizona State coach Todd Graham "pretty much everywhere he's been."
"He is so well-respected that when he came, I think people said, `Wow, OK, there must be something there,''' Rhule said. "For me, he's become a great friend, he's become a great mentor. . . . He just has an unbelievably infectious personality and people gravitate to him. I think it was huge just for me, huge for our players and huge for our team. We go down to THSCA, and there's 10,000 coaches, and I think every coach knows Joey. That goes a long, long way."
Coaching was a career path that McGuire nearly didn't take at all. The Crowley, Texas, native was headed to nursing school at UT-Arlington when the coaching bug bit him.
"I was working at All Saints Hospital (in Fort Worth). I had finished my biochemistry, organic chemistry, all my basics," he said. "All my mom's side was dentists and nurses. . . . I was helping my dad with a couple teams -- he was coaching my sister and nephew -- and I was like, `Man, this is what I want to do.' And I really think that's what I wanted to do all along. I didn't want to disappoint my mom, but I finally called my mom and said, `Look, I know you're going to be disappointed, but I can't do this. I want to be a coach.'''
McGuire jumped in as an assistant coach at Crowley High School for two years, then followed head coach Robert Woods to Cedar Hill for the next six seasons.
"We had some rough years the first years at Cedar Hill," McGuire said. "But, if it wasn't for Robert Woods, I wouldn't be where I am right now. I learned so much football from him. He was a phenomenal guy in the offseason on how to work with kids."
Promoted to the head coaching job when he was 31, McGuire had respectable 6-4 and 5-5 seasons, but said "I feel like we're missing something."
The turning point was a boot camp he adopted from then-Rowlett coach Kiff Hardin.
"And I'm telling you, if you went into Cedar Hill and you didn't run boot camp, there would be a mutiny," McGuire said. "Now, it's the hardest things those kids had ever been a part of. But, it got us over the hump. Our kids started believing. I'll never forget, Romie Blaylock, who played here at Baylor, was in the state track meet and getting ready to run the 400. And he's yelling, `Coach, I'm winning this thing. These guys have never been through boot camp.' It was just that kind of mentality."
Cedar Hill went to the playoffs in 2005 and then won it all in 2006 with a group that included Blaylock, fellow Baylor signees Chris Francis and John Jones and nine other Division I recruits.
"I always tell everybody, I was a really good bus driver. I got `em to the game," McGuire said.
McGuire added two more state championships (2013-14) and a runner-up finish in 2012 before finally making the jump to college.
"The one that I'm probably as proud of as any is the one we didn't win in 2012, because we had six ACLs that season," McGuire said. "Two of them were our starting and backup running back. By the time we got to the state semifinals, we were starting a safety that hadn't played running back since he was a sophomore. He rushed for 179 yards against Austin Westlake to help us win the game."
At Baylor, his tight ends include returning starter Jordan Feuerbacher and Ishmail Wainright off the basketball team.
"I love Jordan. He wants to be a coach, so he's really soaking up a lot of stuff," McGuire said. "He asks a lot of really good questions, why we do certain things. Not questioning it, but as a coach what are we looking at. To be able to be a leader and coach the younger guys, you've got to be unselfish, because most everybody is like, `Can this guy beat me out?' At the end of the day, can we win games? And whoever is on the field has got to be able to work and execute. He's doing a great job with that."
The transition from basketball to football hasn't always been easy for Wainright, who hadn't played football since his freshman year in high school.
"Last Saturday, he was really frustrated with himself, and I said, `You know, I don't speak a foreign language. I would really be frustrated if I had to. And that's really what you're trying to learn, you're trying to learn a totally different language.' And he's doing a phenomenal job. He's a really smart kid."
Feuerbacher called McGuire a coaching "legend."
"I didn't make it past the first round of the playoffs when I was in high school, but I watched him play Katy three years in a row," Feuerbacher said. "Watching (Cedar Hill) win two of three, I'm like, `Dang, this guy's the real deal.' I had no idea he'd be my position coach my senior year. It's been a blessing to get to know him. He's a great guy and a great coach, and he's really just taken us and treated us like family."
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