Veteran coach and Georgia McCollum native not shy about his career, the current college football landscape, and life leading a small mountain-town team

By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

          Andy McCollum isn’t shy, or reserved, and doesn’t do much verbal dancing, in a business where verbal dancing is all but a requirement.

          Owner of an unsuccessful filter, McCollum is a popular speaker at the Macon Touchdown Club, reiterated Monday night in front of an audience used to hearing mostly coachspeak.  

          McCollum didn’t get that memo.

          He touched on the trickle-down benefits to Division III of the big-school NIL and portal dramas, complaining of the absurdities coming from gurus, playing scheduling games, and the joys of being out of the power-4 rat race.

          McCollum is likely to end his career in an unexpected place, unexpected for somebody with one of the more thorough and wide-ranging college football coaching careers.

          He has been in the ACC (twice), Southern Conference, Sun Belt, Big 12, American, old Southwest Conference, the NFL, and as an independent. McCollum has been employed by Georgia Tech (under the spectrum ranging from Paul Johnson to Geoff Collins), Baylor, N.C. State, Middle Tennessee State, Texas-El Paso, and Western Carolina.

          All that, and he has found joy and fulfillment at a private Episcopal liberal arts college in the middle of mountains between Chattanooga and Nashville, set on 13,000 acres with nary a national chain of almost kind within miles, replaced by Stirling’s Coffee House and the Blue Chair Café & Tavern.

          He took over a program that had 38 players upon his arrival – “I kicked off four for being drunk” - and very minimal facilities, other than the 3,000-seat Harris Stadium.

          McCollum is an unexpected walking commercial for the school.

          “It's an academic school, it's on a mountain,” the 66-year-old said. “Just got named the prettiest school in America.

          “It was something I wasn’t sure I was ready to do or wanted to do, until I got on that campus. Saw a big, white cross on the side of campus to tell me it’s a Christian university.”

          Not that McCollum is overly religious or anything. The new job provided a challenge as well as a level of stability, among other things.

          After a career mostly in places where the priorities were a little less substantive and the egos substantial, McCollum was suddenly in a very different place.

          “I love my players,: he said. “ I got a good group. I’ve been a head coach a few times. Usually when you talk to the team, I'll look at my team and 100 players, five of them I really don't like, you know? My problem is that I let them five affect my other 95.

          “That's my problem. Right now, I got 82 kids, and I ain't got a bad kid out there. I can look at all 82 kids and just say, ‘wow.’ What a blessing it is to be able to coach these kids.”

          Long before he spent several years at Georgia Tech, McCollum traveled the highways and two-lane roads of Georgia, including Central Georgia. He knows well scores of area coaches, some of whom make their way to the Touchdown Club when he speaks. He went to college with Dublin’s Roger Holmes, who couldn’t make it this time while preparing for a huge region game with Northeast on Thursday.

          The ongoing changes on the upper level of college football have had a positive effect on the lower levels, like Sewanee and Division III.

          “A lot of these colleges aren't taking high school kids anymore, and it's screwing the high school kids,” McCollum said. “I see that wholeheartedly, and I can’t stand it.

          “I can't stand it. But where does it help me at? A lot of great kids I got get left out, that are serious about education and love playing football.

          “I’ve got kids right now that would’ve played for me when I was the head coach of Middle Tennessee State. I got a couple that played for me when I was at Georgia Tech right now. The talent is coming down to us because of the love of the game and because (they’re) getting overlooked because everybody’d rather take a portal or somebody to quit than take a high school kid that wants to go and make a difference in college and get a serious education.”

          On the improving game-day atmosphere: The stadium's unbelievable. We've had 4, 5,000 show up. It looks like a concert out there. I told them when I took the job, my goal was to have a traffic jam on the mountain on Saturday. We're getting it now.”

          On rivalries, intense on all levels, from Rhodes College to Georgia: “First year we played it, they beat us up pretty good. There's a big trophy that we give out, and they kind of taunt us after it was over, so I figured out who the hell the rival was now.

          “It's kind of like when I was at Georgia Tech. My kids are not allowed to wear red in the building. They're not allowed to wear red on campus. And every day, we do sprints or we do something, we do one more for the team in red. We don't call them by the name.”

          On a unique fund-raising opportunity: “Right now today, we're still charter members of the SEC. Right now, we could go back into the SEC. And I told (the athletics director),  ‘Why don't we?’ And he looked me like, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

          “I said, "Well, I can tell you this. We're a charter member. Call them and tell them we want back in. And they're going to say, ‘No.’ And then make them pay us.

          “And then I can get a new weight room, I can get maybe another coach on my staff. But they're going to pay us not to let us in the dang thing.

          “He ain’t fell for that one yet, either.”