Bohls: G.J. Kinne brings confidence, extensive network of contacts to Texas State job
SAN MARCOS — G.J. Kinne III knows a challenge when he sees one.
And Texas State's new head football coach has witnessed some Grade-A challenges.
But taking over a highly distressed FBS program that one national website ranks as the 124th team out of 133 schools doesn’t come close to overwhelming him. Not even a little bit.
“I don’t think that scared him,” said his father, Gary Joe Kinne Jr., who won high school football state championships at Mesquite and La Vega and at Clovis West in California in his 10 years as a head coach. “Anytime you take your first D1 job, you’re probably not going to get one ready-made. So you got to have a plan.”
Oh, his son has a plan all right. One scripted in fire.
He’s had one since his grandfather coached the extra big-for-his-age, 8-year-old G.J. in football and Little League back when Gary Joe Kinne Sr. had to take his grandson’s birth certificate to convince skeptical opponents.
G.J. has been immersed in football ever since. Starting with the Friday nights when he roamed the sidelines at his dad’s games and loved riding the team bus back from road games, he’s been in love with the sport. That journey culminated with a highly successful career as a quarterback and three NFL seasons interspersed with time in the Canadian Football League and the United Football League. And he signed with the San Antonio Talons, an Arena League team.
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Yeah, a football lifer. And what did he do when he left an August practice recently? Besides time with his wife and two sons, “I went home and watched ‘Hard Knocks,’” Kinne said.
Hard knocks, now that’s a subject he knows intimately.
Never mind that he never actually played in an NFL game. The undrafted quarterback does fondly recall the touchdown pass he threw to receiver Trey Burton in a 2012 preseason game with the Jets.
Didn’t matter if he never got on the field. He soaked up every bit of coaching intel from Doug Pederson and Chip Kelly, Ryan Day and Steve Spagnolo during those years with the Eagles and Giants and from Jeff Traylor, Todd Graham, Gus Malzahn and Chad Morris at Gilmer High and college stops at Hawaii, Tulsa, SMU and Arkansas. Heck, Sonny Dykes once made him the offensive coordinator for a Mustangs’ bowl game at age 28.
Kinne accepted the Texas State job on his 34th birthday last Dec. 2 after only one season as a head coach at Incarnate Word, albeit a hugely successful 12-2 one that included a run to the FCS semifinals. “We should have won the whole deal,” he says, ever the competitor and the second-youngest head coach in college football after Arizona State's 32-year-old Kenny Dillingham.
Goal to go: rebuild the Bobcats
Yes, he’s confident. So he’s undaunted by a flailing Texas State program.
“He told us, ‘This is the job I want,’“ Texas State athletic director Don Coryell said. “That struck a chord personally with me. He’s a very confident person, and we needed someone like that to realize we can turn this football program around.”
So with coaching in his blood and in his extensive background and a great networking personality to mine Texas high schools unlike his predecessor, he comes prepared for the job at Texas State. “I don’t know of anyone with a bad word to say about G.J.,” his dad said.
Never mind the Bobcats have a 20-64 record over the last seven years and haven’t had a winning season since going 7-5 in 2014. Kinne wanted to be there.
“For me,” Kinne said, “I had this job circled.”
He’s faced challenges and adversity before.
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'I was in shock': the 2005 day he'll never forget
The sights and sounds of that spring morning on April 7, 2005, are seared in Kinne’s mind, but no longer haunt him.
One minute, he was sitting in his second period history class at Canton High School with his mind on a track meet later that same day, and the next his entire life turned upside down. His dad had just been shot in the school's fieldhouse.
It wasn’t much later amidst all the confusion when he and his mom were shepherded to the local police station in protective custody. This was a safeguard against the gunman in that tiny town of 3,500 an hour east of Dallas and a rumored hit list.
That was when Kinne was given some paralyzing news. A well-meaning police officer took him into the hallway, looked him straight in the eye and told him that his father had just died.
“You have to grow up,” the cop said sternly. “You’re the man of the house now.”
G.J. was 15.
Fortunately, it wasn’t true. Minutes later, his maternal grandmother relayed the news to the misinformed cop and her shell-shocked grandson after talking to someone at Trinity Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler where Gary Joe Jr. had been airlifted. G.J.’s dad was still alive after being shot at point-blank range in the abdomen by an angry football parent wielding a .45 caliber pistol.
But his son still recalls those numbing words when his world was upended.
“I was in shock,” Kinne recalls now.
Thankfully, his father survived the bizarre shooting by a disgruntled parent of a teammate of G.J.’s, an air-conditioning repairman who slit his wrists before police found him in a wooded area outside Canton and who was later sentenced to 20 years in prison for the deadly assault.
Gary Joe Kinne Jr., a former Baylor linebacker whose 323 tackles still are 11th-most in school history, underwent emergency surgery to repair the damage done by the gunshot wound to his liver and remove the bullet that was lodged in his back.
But on the day of the shooting, his son remembers having to walk through the blood-soaked floor of the fieldhouse. He tearfully clutched his father’s hand as he lay on a stretcher, critically wounded. G.J. would spend much of the next four months by his dad’s bedside as he recuperated for more than 100 days in the hospital.
True to his word, Gary Joe Kinne Jr. overcame a mountain of challenges, including dangerous infections and a prognosis that he had a 5-10 % chance of survival. As he vowed, he was there for the first day of fall practice that August as he would be for all but one Canton game that season.
Even that game he missed, when Canton came out emotionally flat against the worst team in the district, coach Kinne phoned in after a dreadful first half, and the inspired team rallied to win.
The memory of that traumatic ordeal, however, never completely has left G.J.
“I’m naturally a worrier,” he reflected in his new office. “When someone shoots your dad in school, you don’t ever feel safe.”
Turning tragedy into motivation
Canton went on to make a deep playoff run and finish with a 12-2 record, and the emotionally draining experience strengthened G.J.’s resolve through all of his future challenges and ups and downs.
Like when his parents divorced a year later. Like when he and his mother Jocelyne moved a half hour down the road to Gilmer for his senior year. Like when he came to Texas in 2007 as a highly sought-after quarterback who entertained 30 offers from the likes of Oklahoma, Tennessee, Florida and, of course, Baylor, only to fall behind Colt McCoy on the depth chart and transfer to Tulsa. Like fighting to stick on an NFL roster even if it meant lining up at wide receiver or running back or safety and never getting into a real game.
Oh, Kinne's faced his share of adversity, and if anything, his father’s fateful episode only steeled him for what was to come. That traumatic day helped form his no-nonsense, get-it-done makeup to the point where he’s ready for another challenge, taking on one of the nation’s most downtrodden FBS programs.
The Bobcats, who open the season Saturday at Baylor, of all places, have 53 new players, including 19 transfers from Power Five schools. They’ll try to put last year’s 4-8 season and a litany of rocky seasons behind them under this up-and-coming maverick.
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'He's been around some great ones'
Know that Kinne comes highly recommended. Very highly.
“My guy! First, he’s an amazing person,” Kelly said from UCLA. “Second, he’s smart, tough, competitive and loves football. G.J. is a star in the profession.”
Traylor shares that opinion after coaching him and coaching with him.
“He’s extremely personal,” said Traylor, the UTSA miracle worker. “Has an unbelievable heart. He’s been around great coaches and seen things done well. Texas State made a fantastic hire.”
Coryell also heard from Eagles general manager Howie Roseman, who took Kinne under his wing and cultivated in the young Texan a deep love for roster-building.
“He’s been around some great ones,” Gary Joe Kinne Jr. said. “He can be a sponge and take it all in, the good and the bad. Building a roster is what he loves. I really think he could be an NFL GM. At one point, he might have to think about going that route. But I’m really not surprised by his rise in the coaching ranks.”
Learning from the best
After that horrific nightmare at Canton, G.J.’s dad took an assistant coaching job at Baylor. G.J. united with Traylor. The two built a long-standing relationship as Traylor prepared him for his college career at Texas and then Tulsa for three years when he threw for more than 9,400 yards and 81 touchdowns.
From there, he signed as an undrafted free agent with the Jets but was cut after training camp. Twice. He then signed with the New York Giants and later the Philadelphia Eagles where he’d make contacts in an extensive network.
During those three NFL seasons, Kinne made a connection with some of the best minds in football. He did everything possible to try to stick and basically got his masters in Coaching 101.
He soaked up Kelly’s sophisticated and organized practices. He absorbed Pederson’s leadership qualities and penchant for developing relationships with his players, and in Philly he also admired Day's meticulous style. During a coaching stint with Graham, he learned all the X’s and O’s he could from him and a Tulsa staff that included UCF’s Gus Malzahn, Florida State’s Mike Norvell and Morris, the former Arkansas and SMU head coach.
He’d been recruited to Tulsa by Malzahn, who “told me I’d win the Heisman.” He was almost lured to join Morris in his move to Clemson and might have, but for the arcane transfer rules back then.
Kinne also gleaned every shred of information from Traylor in a relationship that’s still tight.
“I love coach Traylor,” Kinne said. “He was unbelievable. My dad was a defensive coach, but coach Traylor taught me how to make reads and gave me offensive structure. He had one of the biggest impacts on my life.”
In fact, if it weren’t for those references and G.J.’s deep Texas ties, Kinne might still be at Incarnate Word.
All these influences left their imprint on Kinne, ranging from his practice of staging short workouts of only 90 minutes to teaching drills identical to those of the Eagles.
“They all couldn’t be more complimentary of G.J. as a football mind,” Coryell said. “And I feel a real buzz around here.”
It’s clear Kinne doesn’t mind taking a risk. If he weren’t confident, why would he sign on as a then-33-year-old head coach of an Incarnate Word program in which quarterback Cam Martin just abandoned to transfer to Washington State?
And one year later after a run to the FCS semifinals where UIW lost 35-32 to North Dakota State after leading 16-0 and averaged 51.5 points and 581 yards a game, he was on the move again.
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Making a quick impression
He’s already won over the Texas State locker room.
“You get a young vibe from him,” said linebacker Dan Foster, who came from Marshall as one of 53 transfers. “He gives it to you straight. He’s a young coach who understands today’s football players and how we think. I feel like we’re going to win now. He wants us to practice today like we’re already champions.”
The players love Kinne's extremely efficient and shorter practices. They have embraced his emphasis on the mental side of the game.
“He’s got a purpose to everything,” said cornerback Kaleb Ford-Dement, a transfer from Washington State. “He wants to keep players’ bodies fresh rather than kill us in training camp.”
Kinne could have stuck around at Incarnate Word, which is picked third in this year’s preseason FCS poll, and been comfortable. Or probably have gotten the job at Tulsa, his alma mater. The Golden Hurricane flirted with him, but Kinne pulled out to take on a program that had bottomed out under Jake Spavital in a four-year dive that included just 10 wins and 26 losses.
“I knew Tulsa. I’d been there,” Kinne said. “It didn’t get to the point (of an offer). I knew the warts there, the strengths and weaknesses. Plus, I’m a Texas guy.”
Through and through.
And a guy who likes a challenge.
What’s one more?
Saturday's game
Texas State (0-0) at Baylor (0-0), 6 p.m., McLane Stadium in Waco, Big 12/ESPN+
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: G.J. Kinne brings mental toughness, confidence to Texas State football
