Immediately when walking into head coach Brent Key’s office at Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field, it’s impossible not to notice the massive window that overlooks the historic stadium. It wraps along the right wall of the room and presents a clear view of the field from end zone to end zone. Over the last 111 years, students have fond memories of being in those stands with friends as they yelled themselves hoarse in support of Tech football.
For Key, it’s a visual reminder of the heart of his program: building the Tech Man.
“Life is about solving problems and figuring [things] out, and that’s what this place teaches you,” Key said as he sat back in his chair during an exclusive, sit-down interview with the Technique on Sept. 25. “It really does, man. It teaches you how to solve real world problems. It teaches you how to use your head to think things out and be a problem solver. A Tech Man figures shit out”.
Being a Tech Man is so important to Key because he is one himself. Under legendary head coach George O’Leary, Key took hold of a starting guard spot on Tech’s offensive line during the 1997 season and never relinquished his spot over the next three seasons. Upon graduation, he returned to the team as a grad assistant for the 2001-02 season.
His time at Tech undoubtedly played a role in his messaging to his players. “Honestly, in college, I didn’t understand the importance of college,” Key admitted. “It was ‘play football and go to school’, not ‘go to school and play football’. That’s why we’ve started the Fifth Quarter Program, which is life after football. It works in conjunction with the Total Person Program for all the student athletes, but the Fifth Quarter is just football. It’s all about life after football and getting these guys to understand that they’re probably going to be in their 20s or 30s before truly understanding what Georgia Tech allows you to do”.
Tech football’s high achievers are not hard to find. Redshirt senior long snapper Henry Freer, who is currently pursuing his Ph.D in chemical and biomolecular engineering at Tech, is a semi-finalist for the Campbell Award. The prize is the highest academic award in college football and recognizes the nation’s best scholar-athlete for academic success, football performance and exemplary leadership. “[Freer] is the smartest kid I’ve ever been around. He is brilliant and he knows it,” Key said with a smile on his face.
As a coach under O’Leary and later Nick Saban, Key received a high-quality education of his own. “[O’Leary] was a hard-ass. But, I learned how to be organized and detailed, leave no stone unturned and build a tough, physical football team. With Coach Saban, it was learning efficiency. Being efficient in every hour is the first thing he taught us,” said Key.
The lessons he learned from Tech, O’Leary and Saban showed up in how he describes the Tech football program with four pillars. “Everything circles back to four things — discipline, toughness, commitment and execution,” said Key.
“It’s not okay to be undisciplined. It’s not okay to not go to class. It’s not okay to make a C when you’re capable of making a B. If you’re going to be great in anything, I really, truly believe you have to work to be great in everything. Usually, the best semesters, GPA wise, correlate with the best semester in football. So, teaching started with learning how not to lose. Why do you lose? You turn the ball over. Now, you learn how to win. How do you win consistently, week in and week out? How do you elevate yourself to be better than you were the week before? When I was at Alabama, we played in four straight national championship games. When you win an actual championship, how do you stay up there? More people die on the way down from Mount Everest than they do going up,” said Key.
To him, toughness is not just a buzzword. It forms a critical interplay with discipline. “Toughness is not going out and getting in a fight. That’s fake toughness, that’s false bravado. Toughness is the ability to withstand force until it breaks you. How much force can you withstand until you’re broken? That’s toughness. Obviously, toughness is part of football. But toughness is also taking the Differential Equations class here, walking up that damn [Freshman Hill] to go to DM Smith or Skiles and being on time to class. That’s discipline and toughness. It takes toughness to do that,” said Key.
He also places a premium on both his commitment and that of his players. “Commitment is one of the most important things in the world. Are you committed to the job you’re doing? Commitment shows. You can’t be half-in and half-out. To run a program and build a program, you have to be committed to it. To me, commitment is a bond. Kids consider a commitment like in recruiting. They think they can just freaking flip and flop a commitment. No. That’s not the case to me. A commitment is firm,” said Key. However, the standard that all three of the previous ideals only show positive results upon execution.
To underline that commitment, there are three rules when it comes to playing football for Tech. “Don’t do anything to keep yourself from graduating. Don’t do anything to keep us from winning a championship. And if you ever put your hands on a woman, I’ll put my size-15 cowboy boots straight up your butt and not ask for permission,” Key stated. In return, the coaching staff has two goals that they aim to deliver on. “We want to make sure that you graduate and leave here a better person than you came here as while developing you as a football player so that we can win championships and you can play as long as you want to play. I want people to come here with aspirations to be first-round draft picks and CEOs, presidents of their own company. People that want to be high achievers in both come here because this is a place you can do that,” said Key.
The players are not the only ones who have to meet those standards. For Key, every day requires him to practice what he preaches. “Every day, there’s a challenge. The challenge is first to compete against myself because when you’re the head coach, president or CEO, whatever you want to call it, or you have your own team at work… they look at you to see how to do things,” said Key.
He is reliant on team leaders to enforce his message. And for Tech, one of those leaders is redshirt junior quarterback Haynes King. “Haynes King is as good of a leader as I’ve been around 24 years of coaching college football,” Key said. “He does everything the way it’s supposed to be done. Works his tail off, takes care of his business, handles his business, and then brings others along with him. But, he also transcends across the team. We’ve got 120 people together. That’s a lot of different backgrounds and everybody’s different. To be able to transcend across all those? That’s a very rare trait to have,” the coach explained.
Those leaders have to be comfortable with the reality of their role. “Leadership is not for everyone,” Key bluntly stated. “You feel like you’re on an island a lot of times. A lot of people think that they should be put in a position of leadership because they do what they’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to do your job. Now, can you take care of your business and now step it up a notch?” asked Key. Leadership is a burden he has shouldered throughout coaching, especially as it’s become heavier over the past two years.
During a period of massive change for the program in September 2022, the now-permanent head coach had a far less secure grip on his position. Former head coach Geoff Collins, who is now the defensive coordinator for the University of North Carolina Tar Heels, was relieved of his duties, with Key stepping into the role as the interim coach. He had every intention of making the job a permanent one.
“When I took over as interim head coach here, I had a job to do — put these players in the best position I could possibly put them in to have success in 2022. In the back of my head, if I ever wanted an opportunity to be the head coach here, I better be prepared for it,” said Key. “So I’d spend my day from the time I walked in at 7:30-8:00 in the morning until probably 11:30-12:00 at night to put all my energy and time and resources into what makes these guys the absolute best they could be. Then, from 12:00 until I fell asleep at night, usually on the couch around 3:30-4:00 in the morning, my time was put towards building a plan of attack or piecing together all the information I had for the future.”
Over the past three weeks of the 2024 season, the Jackets lost a game many expected them to win against the Louisville Cardinals before heading into their bye week. They followed it up by knocking off their undefeated ACC foe, the Duke Blue Devils, 24-14. According to Key, the process of communicating to the team — win or lose — has been consistent regardless of those results. Instead, his priorities lie with making sure his players learn from their mistakes after each game. He does find, however, that losses create effective opportunities for growth, remarking that when he gives the team advice after one, “they feel it and see it more.”
Whatever his final win-loss record ends up being, Key is very clear on what he wants to accomplish at Tech. “Here’s the way I look at Georgia Tech football,” he explains. “You have an old school industrial locomotive coming down the tracks. It goes through the tunnel and it busts out on the other side. Now, it’s a high speed bullet train flying down the tracks. That connects the old school and the new school. That connects the past and the future and the present. That’s a tough, hard-nosed football team that can play faster than anybody,” said Key.
Only halfway through the season, the team has already gone through its fair shares of ups and downs. From now until the end of the season, the Jackets’ discipline and commitment will be assessed every week. They will have to be a tougher team than their opponents and execute consistently as they attempt to improve from last year.
With a Tech Man at the helm, perhaps the Jackets have the best chance they’ve had in a long time of meeting that mandate.