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<\/p>\nBe like Jay Underwood, Quarterback Dads.<\/p>\n
The father of Michigan super freshman Bryce Underwood is one of the good ones. There are good ones despite the constant barrage of headlines about Quarterback Dads gone wild \u2014 Carl Williams (Caleb\u2019s dad) torching his son\u2019s employer publicly, Nic Iamaleava (Nico\u2019s dad) bungling a good situation at Tennessee, Deion Sanders (Shedeur\u2019s dad) doing whatever he did to contribute to a fringe NFL first-round talent going in the fifth round, and so on.<\/p>\n
Those are three success stories at the glamor position of American sports, of course, which means some parental credit must be due. But some of the behaviors match that of countless Quarterback Dads whose sons\u2019 names aren\u2019t known, whose misdirected ambition and absence of perspective make them college football outlaws of sorts.<\/p>\n
\u201cQuarterback Dad\u201d is generally not a compliment among the college coaches I talked to for this piece, some of whom have stopped recruiting quarterbacks who checked every box except: Can we tolerate his dad?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re picking the dad almost as much as we\u2019re picking the quarterback,\u201d said a Power 4 head coach, who was granted anonymity, like others in this story, so he could speak freely on the subject. \u201cEvery person in this business has horror stories.\u201d<\/p>\n
The explosion of money in the game in the past few years has made things only more toxic. But I\u2019m here to tell you there\u2019s hope.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s hope, in part because, at some point, college athletics will become less chaotic. That\u2019s probably going to require collective bargaining at some point. But it will happen, and it means player movement will slow down and compensation will be fairly determined by professionals. Less chaos in college football should mean less chaos among its various factions.<\/p>\n
Also, at least there\u2019s awareness of the Quarterback Dad dynamic. We\u2019re talking about it. People are trying to make things better, including the guy who wrote the actual book on Quarterback Dads, the guy who presents Jay Underwood as a \u201chow-to\u201d of sorts for those with pigskin-slinging children.<\/p>\n
Donovan Dooley is a prominent quarterbacks coach who counts Bryce Underwood among his clients, has worked with the family for years and noted in that 2022 book (written with sportswriter Teddy Greenstein and aptly titled \u201cQuarterback Dads: Wild Tales from the Field\u201d) that Jay had previously been \u201cthe classic Quarterback Dad, in every maddening sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
This included Jay\u2019s proclamation, when Bryce was closer to elementary school than graduation, that he could \u201cbe the LeBron James of football.\u201d Invoking the (arguable) GOAT of another sport is a classic sign of the Not-In-Touch-With-Reality Dad, and Jay\u2019s admitted overzealousness in critiquing his son screamed Helicopter Dad. These are two of the 12 types of problematic Quarterback Dads detailed by Dooley (he lists three good types).<\/p>\n
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Bryce Underwood\u2019s dad, Jay, has remained largely in the background and allowed his son to enjoy the spotlight of being the No. 1 recruit in the nation. (Mike Mulholland \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
It all changed when Jay, with Dooley\u2019s help, realized how strained his relationship with his son was getting. To save it, he needed to revert to being just a dad and take the pressure off his son.<\/p>\n
\u201cTotal turnaround,\u201d Dooley, whose Quarterback University is based in Detroit, said last week. \u201cNow, Jay stays in the background a lot. Hell, I don\u2019t even know if some of the staff at Michigan know him. It\u2019s usually not that way when your son is a prime guy like this, but he sits back and lets Bryce do his thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
To that point, Underwood could not be reached to speak on the topic.<\/p>\n
This is the kind of reform Dooley seeks to foster. Not that he\u2019s seen enough of it. The urge to help goes back to his Detroit childhood as a future high school and college quarterback, dealing with a father he described as \u201ccrazy as hell\u201d when it came to pushing him in football.<\/p>\n
The book inspired an outpouring of letters and emails, Dooley said, from fathers who apologized for their behavior and from both mothers and fathers who thanked him for forcing moments of clarity with his storytelling.<\/p>\n
But Greenstein and Dooley wrote it in the early days of the dirtiest phrase in college football coaching: \u201cNIL and the transfer portal.\u201d For folks in that profession, NIL, the transfer portal and the Quarterback Dad make up the unofficial unholy trinity of the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s heightened the anxiety around everything,\u201d Dooley said of Quarterback Dads now having seven-figure paydays as incentive and free movement as leverage. \u201cI mean, you\u2019ve got dads, not long after kids get out of the womb, kids that are 5 years old, coming up with logos and slogans for social media to get attention. You\u2019ve got dads talking dollar amount with coaches before they ever talk football or academics.\u201d<\/p>\n
How bad is it for some? One Power 4 coach contacted for an interview on Quarterback Dads replied: \u201cNah. I\u2019m staying away from that.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Group of 5 head coach said he loved the topic and that it should be made into a documentary, but was fearful of telling any specific stories because \u201cif it ever got back to me, I\u2019d never get a quarterback again, ever.\u201d<\/p>\n
He did explain the difference between dealing with problematic Quarterback Dads now and five years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cA dad texts, \u2018Why aren\u2019t we doing more quick game with my son? Why so much dropback game?\u2019 S\u2014 like that,\u201d the coach said. \u201cBack before the portal, you text back something like, \u2018Man, let\u2019s sit down after the season and talk about this if you feel that way.\u2019 Now? You pick up the phone immediately and talk through it. You explain why you\u2019re doing what you\u2019re doing, in detail.\u201d<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t necessarily all bad, the coach said, because \u201cwe really should be giving our kids more \u2018whys\u2019 in today\u2019s game and we should be thinking about it collaboratively.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s just harder to be collaborative with someone who, unlike the quarterback in question, doesn\u2019t play the game and doesn\u2019t know the concepts or what it takes to execute them. This can be the mark of The \u201cWe\u201d Dad in Dooley\u2019s book (the dad who thinks he\u2019s also part of the team), The Stat-Hungry Dad or The Really-Not-In-Touch-With-Reality Dad. Or all three.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of them, the wild, wild ones, are all 12,\u201d Dooley said of categories that also include The Reminiscer, The Jealous Dad and The Braggin\u2019 Dad. \u201cThose are the ones who read the book and say, \u2018I\u2019m none of those.\u2019 I\u2019m like, \u2018Dude, you\u2019re all of those.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n
Dooley got to know the Iamaleavas on the recruiting circuit and considers Nic Iamaleava (who did not respond to a request for comment) a friend. He also considers him a cautionary tale.<\/p>\n
As a Group of 5 assistant coach said about Nico Iamaleava\u2019s abrupt departure from Tennessee amid reported financial conflict: \u201cThe kid\u2019s in a perfect offensive system for him, he\u2019s paid $2 million a year, even as a freshman to not play and redshirt, and you leave that for UCLA? That\u2019s not the kid, that\u2019s the people around him.\u201d<\/p>\n
As an outspoken expert on the topic, Dooley has also become a resource for college coaches in the past few years. This is not unlike college coaches who give frank assessments of their former players\u2019 personalities for interested NFL personnel people. In this case, coaches hit up Dooley on what he\u2019s observed and\/or heard about various Quarterback Dads.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m never going to say anything too negative,\u201d Dooley said. \u201cMy code word is, \u2018Yeah, that dad is wired a little different.\u2019 That\u2019s my polite way of saying, \u2018S\u2014, be ready for everything you don\u2019t want.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
What they want is what we all should want, which is for parents to not make life more difficult for their children by mangling experiences that should be positive and enriching.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re like me and you\u2019ve spent a lot of years as a parent around a lot of different sports, you\u2019ve seen some ridiculous behavior from alleged adults. Economics, both in terms of the cost of higher education and the rewards possible for the tiny fraction of a fraction of elite athletes, dictates some of this.<\/p>\n
It does not excuse completely missing the point of what both sports and parents are supposed to be.<\/p>\n
\u201cSport is sacred,\u201d Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea said. \u201cIt\u2019s sacred because it\u2019s a vessel of self-discovery. You learn to belong to yourself, so you can belong to something bigger. Sport is a place of belonging and community where you can gather a large body of people around one mission. That\u2019s special, that\u2019s sacred, but sports culture is sick right now.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd you can experience that at any level of competition. There are a lot of parents who are focused on the performance of a child rather than the development of a child.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is not new.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll keep unnamed the Quarterback Dad who used to call me frequently about 20 years ago, once assuring me the very bad team I covered had as much talent as Pete Carroll\u2019s national champion USC Trojans and was poorly coached \u2014 that was very untrue, and he was very inebriated.<\/p>\n
The late Marv Marinovich remains the standard of Quarterback Dad dysfunction, as first revealed in the 1988 Sports Illustrated story \u201cBred to be a Superstar\u201d by Doug Looney about Marv\u2019s QB son, Todd Marinovich. Marv used Eastern Bloc training methods to build him into a passing machine and essentially hijacked his childhood. Todd was a star recruit prohibited from eating fast food, a USC quarterback arrested for cocaine possession, a failed pro and now a dad speaking out on the right way to nurture kids in sports.<\/p>\n
Plenty of Quarterback Dads care about that. Some of them fall into Dooley\u2019s good categories \u2014 The Helpful Dad, The Hands-Off Dad, The Coach Dad. Archie Manning, who has said the 1988 SI story on Marinovich spooked him into taking special care with his boys, falls into all three.<\/p>\n
So does Dave Henigan, said Memphis coach Ryan Silverfield. Henigan is the head coach at Ryan High School in Denton, Texas. His son Seth just wrapped up four years of starting for the Tigers. Opportunities to leave and make more money emerged. Conversations about fair compensation happened, as they should.<\/p>\n
Development, relationships and happiness prevailed. Seth threw for more than 14,000 yards, and now he\u2019s with the Jacksonville Jaguars as an undrafted free agent.<\/p>\n
\u201cStability should matter,\u201d Silverfield said. \u201cAnd transparency. A huge part of this whole thing is both sides being transparent with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sometimes that still results in a change in environment, and sometimes that\u2019s the right choice. I wanted to interview one of the most impressive Quarterback Dads I\u2019ve encountered for this story, in part because I can see how his son\u2019s movement \u2014 a fourth school in four years starting this fall \u2014 could give a completely false impression of their outlook.<\/p>\n
Mike Wright, now at East Carolina, just wants a chance to play after coming up short at Northwestern, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt. Big Mike Wright just wanted to support his son. Tragically, Big Mike passed away recently at age 49.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was an example of a dad who always functioned in support of his son, not his football player, you know what I mean?\u201d Lea said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy father never played football, but he loved his kids,\u201d Mike Wright said of an engineer who tutored athletes while a student at the University of Tennessee. \u201cWhatever we loved to do, we made it his passion.\u201d<\/p>\n