Untold stories of Brentwood Academy QB George MacIntyre — and what Nick Saban is telling him

Sarah MacIntyre watched in wonder from the top row of the concrete stands overlooking the football field at Father Ryan High School.

Last Friday night's game was over.

Her son, George MacIntyre, wanted his towel back.

Her son, George MacIntyre, got his towel back.

Again.

"I'm like, 'What is he doing?' " Sarah MacIntyre said later that night as she stood outside the visitors' locker room.

"I told him he should start signing them," George's father, Matt, said as he stood beside his wife.

Seems a lot of people want a piece of the 6-foot-6, 182-pound, five-star junior quarterback from Brentwood Academy, the kid ranked No. 2 at his position in his class, the one with 35 offers to play college football. The kid who will lead his team at 7 p.m. Friday on ESPNU against McCallie.

So with the beginning of this season came the beginning of a new game in which an opposing player swipes the white towel that dangles from MacIntyre's front hip. Sometimes it's after a sack. Sometimes it's after a run.

Every time, the story ends the same way.

"I've gotten all of them back," MacIntyre said earlier this week as he rested on a bench next to the football field at Brentwood Academy. "Kind of chase them down a little bit. That's just a get-in-your-head tactic."

George MacIntyre asks Nick Saban questions

Nick Saban looked at Matt MacIntyre and winked as he walked toward a desk inside his office in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. George MacIntyre sat alongside his father.

Saban, the man with seven national championships to his name, the most of anyone in history, opened a drawer and pulled out a folder for his audience.

Nick Saban wants a piece of George MacIntyre, too.

Saban had just offered MacIntyre a scholarship to play for the Crimson Tide. MacIntyre hushed the beckoning butterflies inside him. He responded with a question.

"It's probably the first time a kid had ever said, 'What can I do better,' instead of saying how good he was or what can you do for me kind of thing," Matt MacIntyre said. "The folder was probably 20 pages and he just started going through it."

Saban praised MacIntyre. Saban constructively criticized MacIntyre.

He told him to stop palming the football like it's a basketball. He told him to protect it.

He told him the previous four quarterbacks he coached are now starters in the NFL. That another one was just drafted.

"Most kids, they've been coached to say, 'Coach, I can lead your team. I should be your first choice,' " Matt said. "A lot of kids have been coached what to say by their dads, right? Especially quarterback dads. Quarterback dads can be a problem."

He said he's made it a point to not be a problem. So he stood that recent Friday night, on the tippy-top row of those bleachers at Father Ryan, his wife by his side, his freshman daughter in the stands and his son on the field. He mingled with other parents. He cheered for his kid's team. He ached when they suffered one of the most lopsided defeats in program history.

He never raised his voice. He never questioned a coach.

Unlike his son, who had questions for a coach named Saban. Who was angry and wanted his towel back.

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"I just asked him about the development, what they do with their players," George said of his meeting with Saban. "He had a great answer. Alabama's a place where the proof is in the pudding. They have evidence for what they say. . . . They have definite answers for everything."

George MacIntyre the grandfather and grandson

Google "George MacIntyre" and the results drill to the core of who he is.

At the top of the page is an image of MacIntyre in a long-sleeved, crimson-colored Alabama T-shirt. Saban is to his left, cheeks creased by a smile.

Eyes don't have to wander far to find these words, though: "Born April 30, 1939, St. Petersburg, FL" and "Died January 5, 2016, Nashville, TN."

Those words tell the beginning and the end of the life of another person named George MacIntyre. A life that was lived a lot in between. That is Matt's father. That is George's grandfather. That is former Vanderbilt football coach, one-time SEC and national coach of the year. That is former Miami Hurricanes quarterback George MacIntyre.

The symmetry is symbolic, if not symbiotic. Grandfather and grandson.

Sharing a name with the man who in 2016 died after a 20-plus year fight against multiple sclerosis isn't lost on the latest version of George MacIntyre.

"I try to carry it as an honor," he said. "I've never met anyone who's had anything bad to say about him. He changed a lot of people's lives through football. I try not to feel any pressure from the name."

First or last.

Like father, like grandfather, like son

Thirty-four other schools, including schools he's "pretty heavily interested in" — LSU, Michigan, Tennessee and UCLA — want a piece of George MacIntyre, too.

So does his uncle George Michael MacIntyre, who goes by Mike.

Mike is the head football coach at George's other, more unconventional heavy interest — Florida International University.

He's the man who, like his father, won the Bobby Dodd Coach of the Year Award. He's the man who was head coach at Colorado and San Jose State, who played for Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech. The man who spent five seasons as an assistant coach in the NFL with the Dallas Cowboys and New York Jets.

George's cousins Jay and Jonston are on the coaching staff at FIU, too. The former played for Colorado, the latter for Chapman University. Oh, and young George's father, Matt, played for Western Kentucky.

Football, you see, is sewn into the family's DNA.

"Definitely a true family feeling," George said of FIU. "There's no better place to build it than Miami. They're definitely intriguing."

George's uncle offered his nephew during a joint phone call with FIU basketball coach Jeremy Ballard, who also offered MacIntyre a scholarship. George was a freshman.

"That was a cool moment," he said, "especially being 15 years old. They've been on me ever since."

Let the recruiting games begin

Sarah MacIntyre listened as she paced nervously inside her son's bedroom.

Matt MacIntyre, a territory manager for a global healthcare company, was out of town. Pitt football coach Pat Narduzzi was on the line.

George MacIntyre was a freshman who would spend his first season at Brentwood Academy not on the field but rather watching and learning from press boxes. He was about to receive his first college offer.

"I was like, 'Oh my goodness. How do I . . . ? I don't know anything about this,' " Sarah said.

Sarah pressed record on her phone. George impressed Naduzzi.

"I thought he was just going to say, 'We'd love to have you at camp,' " George said. "It kind of changed my perspective. I thought I was going to be a college basketball player."

"George did such a great job," Sarah said.

He's pretty much handled his whole recruiting process by himself since. His parents for the most part mind their own business when it comes to that topic.

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That has meant seemingly endless phone calls — sometimes as many as 15 per day. That has meant mounds of text messages and mountains of mail.

That meant George sometimes staying up until 11 o'clock at night responding, then doing his homework before a morning practice.

"I don't even know all he does; he handles so much of it," Sarah said. "After standing outside his bedroom door, I'd be like, 'Who's he talking to? Why isn't he studying?' Thinking it was going to be a girl or a friend or whatever.

"It was always a coach. I'd just stand there and kind of listen in. We laugh and say, 'He really needs to tell us more.' "

George MacIntyre, LeBron James and basketball

Matt MacIntyre has tried taking his son deer hunting, turkey hunting. Tried putting the football and basketball and soccer to the side.

"He shot a deer and killed it and he kind of felt bad about it," Matt said. "He'd be like, 'I could be shooting a basketball right now.' "

Basketball was George MacIntyre's first obsession. And his second college offer.

Not long after Pitt called him about football did Arizona State offer him a basketball scholarship.

The world of basketball is where MacIntyre rubbed shoulders with LeBron James' kids, where he met James' mother and his wife.

George was in sixth grade.

"He came downstairs and he's like, 'LeBron James' team is having tryouts this Saturday in Akron, Ohio,' " Matt said. "I'm like, Oh, my God, George. You couldn't try out for a team here?' "

Nope. Six hours to Akron they drove. Some kids made fun of him because his name was "country." They started calling him "G-Mac." He made the team.

"That's when I thought, OK, he's going to be a little different," Matt said.

"At that point I was just trying to find the best AAU team, and it happened to be LeBron James and his sons," George said.

'He's going to get killed and it's my fault'

George MacIntyre has wanted a piece of football for a while.

He was 10 years old, holding his father's hand in a tunnel inside Colorado's football stadium.

A DJ blasted music through oversized speakers that lined the tunnel. A real-life buffalo, named Ralphie, ran by.

"They open the garage door and the players run out on the field," Matt said.

So did Ralphie. So did George, with the team his Uncle Mike was coaching at the time.

"Here's this live buffalo, right?" Matt said. "My wife is like, 'Be careful with George down there.' I'm so into it because there's crazy music playing and it's loud.

"All of a sudden I can't find George," he continued. "There's all this smoke."

"I panicked. I was like, 'He's going to get killed and it's my fault.' "

A team manager spotted young George mid-sprint and returned him safely to his terrified father.

'I'm like, 'Oh my God, George, you're not supposed to run out there,'" Matt said. "The team runs out; we walk."

"That's one of the most hype moments of my life," George said. "Ralphie running. People don't know this, but that tunnel shakes it's so loud. The whole thing is lined with speakers. Then they open this garage door and it's just smoke. I just started running."

Jalen Ramsey, Darius Garland motivate George MacIntyre

George MacIntyre was leaving a voluntary weightlifting workout after school when he noticed two Lamborghinis in the parking lot.

"I was walking out and Jalen Ramsey and Darius Garland both parked Lamborghinis right next to each other," MacIntyre said.

He'd talked to the Brentwood Academy graduates on his way in — Ramsey an NFL star and Garland of NBA fame.

Not until MacIntyre was on his way out did the thought occur to him.

"I got in my truck and I was like, 'Did I just lift hard enough? . . . Did they work harder than me to get where they wanted to be?' " he wondered.

"It's definitely motivational."

Not so much because of what Ramsey and Garland had parked in the lot, but more how they got what they had parked in the lot.

That's how MacIntyre's mind works. He dressed for nary a game as a freshman.

He wasn't happy. He didn't complain.

He entered his sophomore year with a junior and senior ahead of him on the depth chart. That didn't last long.

Rather than throwing a tantrum, MacIntyre threw a 40-yard touchdown the first time the ball was snapped to him in a varsity game.

Did he jump up and down?

"He just turned and stared at the coach," Matt said. "(Former Brentwood Academy) Coach (Cody White) loved it."

George MacIntyre's 'really down to earth'

The Eagles fell a yard short of reaching the state championship game in MacIntyre's first season as a starter, and White's last as head coach.

The attention and offers, though, never stopped.

"He's really down to earth," first-year BA football coach Jacob Gill said. "That's in every phase of his life. It's unique when you get a kid who's that highly recruited and can pick anywhere he wants to go to be able to handle that process. It speaks a lot to his maturity."

This season hasn't gone quite as planned so far. Brentwood Academy is 1-3, with two of those losses by a combined four points.

George MacIntyre, who has thrown for 1,014 yards, seven touchdowns and four interceptions this season, isn't taking too kindly to it.

He hates losing more than he loves winning, he said.

Kind of like how he feels when someone takes his towels.

"There's a fine line between trying to get in your head and disrespect," he said. "The last thing I'm going to do is take disrespect from someone I don't even know. I usually take it with a grain of salt, but you want to steal something from me . . . "

His voice trailed off.

His point was made.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Untold stories of George MacIntyre, the phenom college football recruit