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GJ Kinne: The next great offensive mind of CFB?

GreenspointTexas

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Nicole44

Nicole44 22023

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He might be one of the next up and coming OCs for sure. Always have to keep an eye on programs like Texas State and others because that’s where these guys matriculate from. DeBoer was HC at Sioux Falls and then Fresno State before Washington. I mean we will see how the program does without Penix but a lot of these guys start small and grow into bigger programs. Then they get a shot with a P5 and are successful and people wonder where they came from or how it was that particular P5 school found the coach. 

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GJ Winne

GJ Winne 166

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21 hours ago, 4th and 5 said:

The Cats gotta find a way to hang on to GJ. 

We've got plenty of time to worry about that later.  It takes a couple of years and a much more fleshed out resume for a G5 HC to get the P5 call up.  Have all the confidence in the world that Damphousse signs Kinne to a Traylor-like contract extension that puts more money in his pocket to stay, and gives TXST more money back when he does leave.

Remember, this is only his 2nd year as a HC, and only his 4th coaching overall.

As a coach:
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GJ Winne

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On 10/2/2023 at 11:03 AM, Hook1997 said:

How come Sam Houston got to go straight to Conference USA and not move Texas State there.  Sun Belt is just teams that should have never been moved up from FCS but so is most of C USA but I’d say it’s a bit better.  

 

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MrBig

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1 hour ago, GreenspointTexas said:

I could def see Houston taking a shot at Kinne if they fire Holgo next month

I think so too. Will Stein is doing pretty good at Oregon after leaving UTSA. I know a position coach is different than HC but TxSt has been bad forever and for Kinne to possibly take them to their first bowl shows he’s got the chops to turn a team around quickly.

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Vertigo

Vertigo 20254

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1 hour ago, MrBig said:

I think so too. Will Stein is doing pretty good at Oregon after leaving UTSA. I know a position coach is different than HC but TxSt has been bad forever and for Kinne to possibly take them to their first bowl shows he’s got the chops to turn a team around quickly.

Between Kinne and Traylor, they certainly have some solid options to replace Holgo. 

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Evil Bill Obrien

Evil Bill Obrien 3162

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On 10/2/2023 at 11:03 AM, Hook1997 said:

How come Sam Houston got to go straight to Conference USA and not move Texas State there.  Sun Belt is just teams that should have never been moved up from FCS but so is most of C USA but I’d say it’s a bit better.  That coach definitely won’t be there in the next year or two, he’s moving on. 

Yeah this hasn't been true for a fairly long while now. Sunbelt has progressed to the point where in football it is better than or at very least equal of the MWC and AAC and way better than the rest of the G5 conferences. CUSA was literally on its death bed and had to start calling up bad FCS programs that were no where near ready for FBS ball, so much so that NCAA had to step in and up the requirements of moving up from to FBS to stem the tide of crap CUSA was bringing up.

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Hornius Emeritus

Hornius Emeritus 12401

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5 hours ago, GJ Winne said:

 


I'm waiting to see some college-football obsessed billionaire who happens to come from, say, the University of Bowling Green lay out 100 million per year for NIL to buy national championships for Bowling Green or maybe give a BILLION to the University of Bowling Green for facility upgrades.   I wonder what Phil Knight is going to do for Oregon in his will. He's 85 years old. 

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ButtFumble

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2 hours ago, Vertigo said:

Between Kinne and Traylor, they certainly have some solid options to replace Holgo. 

unfortunately they also have tilly fertata to deal with for any potential coach......he screwed things up with the search when they ended up with The Major, then cut The Major because of "standards", and hired his drinking buddy to run the program into shit

if he tries the same bullshit he did with the search after Herminator well coaches like Traylor and Kinne will tell him to fuck off just like a lot of coaches did when they ended up with The Major

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ButtFumble

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5 minutes ago, Fondren & Main said:

Major should not have been fired from UH.

the story was already written the moment he was hired.....very loved former UT player......assistant to the guy that just left their "coaches car" car at the airport to go to coach UT....young with no head coaching experience and only coordinator experience at their program for the guy that was thought to be the "mastermind of the offense"......he was about their 5th choice that they had to hire because no one else wanted any part of tilly's bullshit contract requirements......the head coach just prior that was fired after going 8-5 and then 7-5 (8-5 if you figure he would have coached a bowl win also) the prior two seasons and that left a lot of the players that Herminator won with......the fans hated Major from the start.....that spread to the attitude of the team....an arrogant university president that likes the sizzle more than the substance and that likes the attention.....and a chain restaurant billionaire that likes the same and hates UT

I can't fault him for taking the job and I am not sure if it set his career advancement back any or not, but he would have had to win 9 or 10 games every season until he left (and someone was willing to pay the buyout) or he was going to end up fired....and things would have been heated anyway if he was winning 9 or 10 games his first 2 or 3 years and then refusing to sign a new contract with another bullshit buyout in it

he is doing pretty well as the OC at USA he should probably get a bump to OC at some SEC SEC SEC or Big 12 program soon enough if not a HC job at a G5 that understands the bullshit at UH and that sees 8-5 a a good start for a coach at their program and something to build on instead of something to fire

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GJ Winne

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2 hours ago, Vertigo said:

Between Kinne and Traylor, they certainly have some solid options to replace Holgo. 

This is one of the biggest reasons I'm not sweating losing Kinne after this year....beside the obvious fact that he's only got 1 year of head coaching at FBS, and 4 years of coaching college total to his resume.

Imagine taking Kinne with a....what?  7-6? 8-5? record and 1 bowl game (please dear Tom Cruise), over Traylor and his 38-15 or 37-16 record and 4 bowl games, that includes a 23-5 stretch at a similarly hapless program.

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SHOOTER12

SHOOTER12 8787

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On 10/1/2023 at 4:36 PM, HtownHorn said:

My thoughts as well. Dana is owed a shit ton on his buyout, so their next coach will have to be a younger G5 guy.

Never paid much attention to Holgo, or his past. All I know is that he seems like an immediately unlikable asshole.

What's his story? Maybe then I can figure out why I want to punch his face in.

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HtownHorn

HtownHorn 14443

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1 hour ago, SHOOTER12 said:

Never paid much attention to Holgo, or his past. All I know is that he seems like an immediately unlikable asshole.

What's his story? Maybe then I can figure out why I want to punch his face in.

He's a drunk, that hates everything about being a coach. Has no relationship with Houston area HS coaches and spends little time recruiting at that level.

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dingleberryswitzer

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On 10/19/2023 at 2:45 PM, Fondren & Main said:

Major should not have been fired from UH.

I thought this too did a couple years.  But since major has since fallen off the face of the earth and is I think coaching at some fbs in Alabama, I guess he’s want the desired commodity I thought he was.  

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DFW Horn

DFW Horn 6116

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1 hour ago, Evil Bill Obrien said:

Not gonna keep him in San Marcos forever, but good to see the administration trying to keep GJ in town as long as they can:

 

 

 

aggy should open up again within the next 5 years, if that's what Kinne is interested in.

...or maybe Sark goes NFL?

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GJ Winne

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Some Coaches Called Texas State a “Career-Killer.” G.J. Kinne Made It His Calling Card.
In his first year in San Marcos, Kinne has coached the Bobcats to a winning record and the school’s first-ever appearance in a postseason bowl game.

Deion Sanders was college football’s hottest name this season after he infused the University of Colorado with seventy new players through high school recruiting and the NCAA transfer portal. Less attention went to the team with the second-largest overhaul: the Texas State Bobcats, who added 53 new faces to their roster.

Somehow, first-year Texas State head coach G. J. Kinne forged a 7–5 team from all those new faces, proving wrong the peers who warned him Texas State could be a career-killer. Kinne’s two most recent predecessors in San Marcos compiled a 20–63 record over the previous seven seasons. Now, the Bobcats are headed to their first-ever bowl game, against Rice University in the First Responder Bowl on December 26.

The Bobcats’ historic turnaround has earned Kinne a contract extension and a raise, and it began with a headline-grabbing upset of Baylor in September. That game showed off what would become Texas State’s calling cards: a furious offensive pace that produced 36 points and 470.8 yards per game, a fly-to-the-football defense that led the nation in tackles for losses, and special teams that returned two kickoffs for touchdowns.

“It’s probably going back to the competitor I am and the confidence I have,” Kinne told me. “Even my agent was telling me, ‘I don’t know if you want to take that job. I think you’re going to be able to get something better later.’ I’m like, ‘Nope, this is the one I want. I want to go in and change it and hopefully be here for a really long time because of the location and believing I can do this.’

“I tell our transfers I don’t care where you’re coming from,” the 35-year-old coach went on. “People really don’t care. They just want to know if you’re going to work hard and if you care about the team. That’s what I’ve tried to do every time I’ve gone to a new place, whether playing or coaching. Just go in, work hard, and start developing relationships.”

Kinne was a hot name on the coaching carousel after his 2022 season at the University of the Incarnate Word, in San Antonio, thanks to a 12–2 record and an offense that averaged 51.5 points per game. Those who know him best are neither surprised that Kinne accepted the challenge of Texas State or that he has succeeded beyond almost anyone’s wildest expectations.

Perhaps the best way to understand the nearly miraculous job Kinne has pulled off in San Marcos is to go back eighteen years to a spring afternoon at the New York Giants headquarters in New Jersey.  The Giants had invited Kinne and a handful of other quarterbacks to their 2005 spring tryouts to fill out the team’s depth chart.

After Kinne had finished a series of passing drills, the Giants then-defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo approached with an odd request. “Hey, we’re about to work out some safeties,” he said. “Have you ever played safety?”

As a matter of fact, he had. Kinne didn’t mention the last time he played safety was during his high school days in East Texas, when he was one of the most heralded quarterbacks in the land. But if the Giants needed a safety, by gosh, he’d be happy to play some. How hard could it be? “I was just trying to create value for myself,” he said. “I knew the playbook. I knew all the plays.”

He tried out alongside six other defensive backs and was the only one offered a contract. It remains a point of pride for Kinne. Although he never got into a game with either of his two NFL organizations, the Giants and Philadelphia Eagles, Kinne considers his time in professional locker rooms, watching how NFL organizations were run, to have been invaluable training for all that would follow.

“I think I’ve known forever that I wanted to coach,” he said. “I knew I wanted to play in the NFL, and then I wanted to coach. It was just whether I was coach in the NFL or college. I think it’s a little bit more fun in college. I like being the head coach and the GM. I get to evaluate, I get to sign, I get to pretty much do it all at the college level, where in the NFL, you’ve got one or two guys that do that.”

Amid countless stories his peers tell about Kinne’s people skills, creativity, and energy, his decision to accept the challenge at Texas State perhaps says more about him than anything else. Like a few million other Texans, he’d floated the Hill Country rivers around San Marcos and had been struck by the area’s beauty. With nearly 40,000 undergraduates surrounded by all that Texas high school football talent, he saw the program as a sleeping giant. “You always kind of wondered why it hadn’t happened there,” he said. For one thing, the school never joined the arms race of facilities and coaching salaries.

Kinne’s task would be winning enough games to get the university’s sizable alumni base interested in writing checks to support the program and buying tickets to build a winning team. He could look down the road where his mentor and close friend, Jeff Traylor, had built a winner at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Could Kinne do the same at Texas State?

“We didn’t accomplish all our goals this year, but I think getting to that bowl game and hopefully getting that eighth win will be a huge step in the right direction,” Kinne said.

Texas State quarterback T. J. Finley, who was previously at LSU and Auburn, threw 24 touchdown passes and had a 68.6 completion percentage. Wide receiver Joey Hobert caught eight touchdown passes and had 847 receiving yards after transferring from Utah Tech.

In rebuilding the Bobcats roster, Kinne focused on Texas high school players. His motto is “take back Texas,” and his roster has 94 Texans. His first recruiting class had an unusual breakdown of 46 transfers and seven high school recruits. “I wish we would’ve signed more high school kids,” Kinne said. “But it’s just so hard with the transfer portal to really go all high school nowadays.

“But it’s not the reality of college football anymore,” he went on. “I think we always have to sign Texas high school kids because of the development part of it, because of the culture that you want to build. And Texas is the best high school football there is, the best coaching there is. You can get some really, really good players that maybe Texas doesn’t take or OU doesn’t take. You can still get NFL-caliber players.”

Kinne’s other challenge in San Marcos was figuring out which players he wanted from the portal. To do full scouting reports on the hundred of eligible athletes would have been nearly impossible. Instead, he leaned on his relationships with Texas high school coaches.

“His first week on the job, we went to the Texas High School Coaches Association’s offices,” Texas State athletic director Don Coryell told me, “and they were having one of their larger annual meetings with their coaches from across the state. My intention was to introduce G. J. as our new coach, but when he walked into the room, probably forty people came up to hug him and tell him it was great to see him again. I realized what kind of network he already had in place.”

Kinne’s assistant coaching stops include SMU, Arkansas, Hawaii, and Central Florida, along with a special-projects assignment for the Eagles. Along the way, he has picked the brains of coaching luminaries like Chip Kelly, Doug Pederson, Sonny Dykes, and Ryan Day, among others. And then there’s Traylor, the most important man in Kinne’s life outside of his dad.

Gary Joe Kinne Jr. was the coach at Canton High School in 2005 when an unhappy parent of a player shot him in the chest. G. J. Kinne was initially told that his dad had died. He hadn’t, but he’d come close. At the lowest point in his young life, the sixteen-year-old Kinne turned to Traylor, the hugely successful coach at Gilmer High School seventy miles away. “I dealt with it the best I could,” Kinne told the Athletic this summer. “It definitely changed me as a person. Anytime there’s that type of trauma involved and someone does that to your father, who’s basically your hero, it’s gonna stay with you forever.”

Kinne wanted out of Canton, saying, “I no longer felt safe there.” He and Traylor met at a Dairy Queen, where a relationship of mutual respect was born. It endures to this day. “We gave him unconditional love,” Traylor told the Athletic. “We treated him like he was one of our own from the very beginning.”

Kinne played one season for Traylor at Gilmer, throwing 47 touchdown passes in an undefeated regular season. Later, they would work together on the coaching staffs at SMU and Arkansas. Traylor’s son Jordan was a groomsman in Kinne’s wedding. Kinne’s younger brother, McLane, won a state championship playing for Traylor at Gilmer.

When UTSA and Texas State played in the second week of this season, both men called it one of the most awkward games of their lives. UTSA won 20–13. “I know for a fact that dude loves me,” Kinne told me. “I’m like a son to him. If I needed something, I know he’d be there for me. It’s just a unique situation. When we played, that was the hardest game for me because I pull for him every week, and I couldn’t that week.”

“He’s a pied piper with kids,” Traylor told me. “Kids love him. He has an unbelievably kind spirit. He loves people. And you can’t fake that stuff. That’s just who G. J. is. He’s like my own son, pretty much. My son and him are best of friends.”

As for Kinne’s coaching acumen, Traylor said: “He’s got a great football IQ. Everybody talks about him being a player’s coach and how much he loves kids, but they kind of forget he’s still got to coach ball. And the kid knows a lot of football. He’s been around some great coaches. He’s seen a lot of great things. He’s got a great football IQ and a lot of common sense. He can spot talent, he can recruit it, and he’s really good with kids.”

Kinne texted Traylor before Texas State’s victory over Baylor to thank him for all his support and encouragement through the years. Traylor did not see it until moments after his own team lost a 17–14 heartbreaker to Houston on the same day. He immediately fired back a congratulatory text.

When Kinne got his players alone in the locker room after the Bobcats’ 42–31 victory in Waco, his thoughts flashed to the furious pace of the past year, of so many players coming and going and the feeling that he might never catch up. He brought so many players into the program, in part, because so many were leaving from the roster he inherited. Some of them were players he couldn’t talk into staying.

In that joyous moment, he thanked the players who had stayed, grabbing defensive end Jordan Revels and telling him, “Man, I appreciate you for believing in us. I know you could have left, but you decided to stay and so I just appreciate you for that.”

“You get a young vibe from him,” linebacker Dan Foster, who came from Marshall, told the Austin American-Statesman. “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.”

There were tough times, too. The Bobcats were 4–1 and one of the most interesting stories in college football at the beginning of October when they went on the road and allowed Louisiana to score two touchdowns in the final six minutes of a 34–30 defeat. They were routed 77–31 by Arkansas State in the next-to-last game of the season before finishing with a 52–44 win over South Alabama. Beating Rice in the First Responder Bowl would give Texas State eight wins for the first time since 2008.

“This was not an easy year by any means,” Kinne said. “There were many times I was like, ‘Whew, I don’t know. Just put your head down and go to work because it’s not looking good.’

“So we were able to come out and make the most of it,” he continued. “I think the pride you saw in the alumni and the community, especially after we beat Baylor and got to the bowl game, it’s fun now. You see people in the stands, and you see the belief and the expectations. After you beat Baylor, people are like, ‘Oh, you should win every game.’ Well, that’s the way I feel, so I get it. We’re not there yet. There were a couple of games this year where we just didn’t know how to win yet. Hopefully, next year we don’t have those games.”

https://www.texasmonthly.com/arts-entertainment/texas-state-football-coach-gj-kinne-first-responder-bowl/

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msucolt45

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If Traylor got the aggy job, I really think he would’ve nabbed GJ as his OC, paid him 2x TxState HC salary, then after 2-3 seasons, GJ could’ve got a bigger HC spot. Just IMO, as aggy F’d it up as always. As a Longhorn, I appreciate their collective ineptitude! Best of luck aggy, just kidding, as I hope you suffer for a decade+!

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Funk Doctor Spock

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On 10/19/2023 at 1:55 PM, Hornius Emeritus said:


I'm waiting to see some college-football obsessed billionaire who happens to come from, say, the Bowling Green State University lay out 100 million per year for NIL to buy national championships for Bowling Green or maybe give a BILLION to the Bowling Green State University  for facility upgrades.   I wonder what Phil Knight is going to do for Oregon in his will. He's 85 years old. 

I had to fix this, it was annoying me. 

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Tex Pete

Tex Pete 20136

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53 minutes ago, CleverNickname said:

He just gladly took on a known rapist as his star transfer QB. So as far as I am concerned, fuck him. He is permanently crossed off my list.

I get what you’re saying (and don’t even know what player you’re referring to), but some people are truly interested in helping/rehabbing others by giving them second chances and mentoring them. I wouldn’t read much into it. 

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SHOOTER12

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On 12/22/2023 at 6:48 PM, GJ Winne said:

Some Coaches Called Texas State a “Career-Killer.” G.J. Kinne Made It His Calling Card.
In his first year in San Marcos, Kinne has coached the Bobcats to a winning record and the school’s first-ever appearance in a postseason bowl game.

Deion Sanders was college football’s hottest name this season after he infused the University of Colorado with seventy new players through high school recruiting and the NCAA transfer portal. Less attention went to the team with the second-largest overhaul: the Texas State Bobcats, who added 53 new faces to their roster.

Somehow, first-year Texas State head coach G. J. Kinne forged a 7–5 team from all those new faces, proving wrong the peers who warned him Texas State could be a career-killer. Kinne’s two most recent predecessors in San Marcos compiled a 20–63 record over the previous seven seasons. Now, the Bobcats are headed to their first-ever bowl game, against Rice University in the First Responder Bowl on December 26.

The Bobcats’ historic turnaround has earned Kinne a contract extension and a raise, and it began with a headline-grabbing upset of Baylor in September. That game showed off what would become Texas State’s calling cards: a furious offensive pace that produced 36 points and 470.8 yards per game, a fly-to-the-football defense that led the nation in tackles for losses, and special teams that returned two kickoffs for touchdowns.

“It’s probably going back to the competitor I am and the confidence I have,” Kinne told me. “Even my agent was telling me, ‘I don’t know if you want to take that job. I think you’re going to be able to get something better later.’ I’m like, ‘Nope, this is the one I want. I want to go in and change it and hopefully be here for a really long time because of the location and believing I can do this.’

“I tell our transfers I don’t care where you’re coming from,” the 35-year-old coach went on. “People really don’t care. They just want to know if you’re going to work hard and if you care about the team. That’s what I’ve tried to do every time I’ve gone to a new place, whether playing or coaching. Just go in, work hard, and start developing relationships.”

Kinne was a hot name on the coaching carousel after his 2022 season at the University of the Incarnate Word, in San Antonio, thanks to a 12–2 record and an offense that averaged 51.5 points per game. Those who know him best are neither surprised that Kinne accepted the challenge of Texas State or that he has succeeded beyond almost anyone’s wildest expectations.

Perhaps the best way to understand the nearly miraculous job Kinne has pulled off in San Marcos is to go back eighteen years to a spring afternoon at the New York Giants headquarters in New Jersey.  The Giants had invited Kinne and a handful of other quarterbacks to their 2005 spring tryouts to fill out the team’s depth chart.

After Kinne had finished a series of passing drills, the Giants then-defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo approached with an odd request. “Hey, we’re about to work out some safeties,” he said. “Have you ever played safety?”

As a matter of fact, he had. Kinne didn’t mention the last time he played safety was during his high school days in East Texas, when he was one of the most heralded quarterbacks in the land. But if the Giants needed a safety, by gosh, he’d be happy to play some. How hard could it be? “I was just trying to create value for myself,” he said. “I knew the playbook. I knew all the plays.”

He tried out alongside six other defensive backs and was the only one offered a contract. It remains a point of pride for Kinne. Although he never got into a game with either of his two NFL organizations, the Giants and Philadelphia Eagles, Kinne considers his time in professional locker rooms, watching how NFL organizations were run, to have been invaluable training for all that would follow.

“I think I’ve known forever that I wanted to coach,” he said. “I knew I wanted to play in the NFL, and then I wanted to coach. It was just whether I was coach in the NFL or college. I think it’s a little bit more fun in college. I like being the head coach and the GM. I get to evaluate, I get to sign, I get to pretty much do it all at the college level, where in the NFL, you’ve got one or two guys that do that.”

Amid countless stories his peers tell about Kinne’s people skills, creativity, and energy, his decision to accept the challenge at Texas State perhaps says more about him than anything else. Like a few million other Texans, he’d floated the Hill Country rivers around San Marcos and had been struck by the area’s beauty. With nearly 40,000 undergraduates surrounded by all that Texas high school football talent, he saw the program as a sleeping giant. “You always kind of wondered why it hadn’t happened there,” he said. For one thing, the school never joined the arms race of facilities and coaching salaries.

Kinne’s task would be winning enough games to get the university’s sizable alumni base interested in writing checks to support the program and buying tickets to build a winning team. He could look down the road where his mentor and close friend, Jeff Traylor, had built a winner at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Could Kinne do the same at Texas State?

“We didn’t accomplish all our goals this year, but I think getting to that bowl game and hopefully getting that eighth win will be a huge step in the right direction,” Kinne said.

Texas State quarterback T. J. Finley, who was previously at LSU and Auburn, threw 24 touchdown passes and had a 68.6 completion percentage. Wide receiver Joey Hobert caught eight touchdown passes and had 847 receiving yards after transferring from Utah Tech.

In rebuilding the Bobcats roster, Kinne focused on Texas high school players. His motto is “take back Texas,” and his roster has 94 Texans. His first recruiting class had an unusual breakdown of 46 transfers and seven high school recruits. “I wish we would’ve signed more high school kids,” Kinne said. “But it’s just so hard with the transfer portal to really go all high school nowadays.

“But it’s not the reality of college football anymore,” he went on. “I think we always have to sign Texas high school kids because of the development part of it, because of the culture that you want to build. And Texas is the best high school football there is, the best coaching there is. You can get some really, really good players that maybe Texas doesn’t take or OU doesn’t take. You can still get NFL-caliber players.”

Kinne’s other challenge in San Marcos was figuring out which players he wanted from the portal. To do full scouting reports on the hundred of eligible athletes would have been nearly impossible. Instead, he leaned on his relationships with Texas high school coaches.

“His first week on the job, we went to the Texas High School Coaches Association’s offices,” Texas State athletic director Don Coryell told me, “and they were having one of their larger annual meetings with their coaches from across the state. My intention was to introduce G. J. as our new coach, but when he walked into the room, probably forty people came up to hug him and tell him it was great to see him again. I realized what kind of network he already had in place.”

Kinne’s assistant coaching stops include SMU, Arkansas, Hawaii, and Central Florida, along with a special-projects assignment for the Eagles. Along the way, he has picked the brains of coaching luminaries like Chip Kelly, Doug Pederson, Sonny Dykes, and Ryan Day, among others. And then there’s Traylor, the most important man in Kinne’s life outside of his dad.

Gary Joe Kinne Jr. was the coach at Canton High School in 2005 when an unhappy parent of a player shot him in the chest. G. J. Kinne was initially told that his dad had died. He hadn’t, but he’d come close. At the lowest point in his young life, the sixteen-year-old Kinne turned to Traylor, the hugely successful coach at Gilmer High School seventy miles away. “I dealt with it the best I could,” Kinne told the Athletic this summer. “It definitely changed me as a person. Anytime there’s that type of trauma involved and someone does that to your father, who’s basically your hero, it’s gonna stay with you forever.”

Kinne wanted out of Canton, saying, “I no longer felt safe there.” He and Traylor met at a Dairy Queen, where a relationship of mutual respect was born. It endures to this day. “We gave him unconditional love,” Traylor told the Athletic. “We treated him like he was one of our own from the very beginning.”

Kinne played one season for Traylor at Gilmer, throwing 47 touchdown passes in an undefeated regular season. Later, they would work together on the coaching staffs at SMU and Arkansas. Traylor’s son Jordan was a groomsman in Kinne’s wedding. Kinne’s younger brother, McLane, won a state championship playing for Traylor at Gilmer.

When UTSA and Texas State played in the second week of this season, both men called it one of the most awkward games of their lives. UTSA won 20–13. “I know for a fact that dude loves me,” Kinne told me. “I’m like a son to him. If I needed something, I know he’d be there for me. It’s just a unique situation. When we played, that was the hardest game for me because I pull for him every week, and I couldn’t that week.”

“He’s a pied piper with kids,” Traylor told me. “Kids love him. He has an unbelievably kind spirit. He loves people. And you can’t fake that stuff. That’s just who G. J. is. He’s like my own son, pretty much. My son and him are best of friends.”

As for Kinne’s coaching acumen, Traylor said: “He’s got a great football IQ. Everybody talks about him being a player’s coach and how much he loves kids, but they kind of forget he’s still got to coach ball. And the kid knows a lot of football. He’s been around some great coaches. He’s seen a lot of great things. He’s got a great football IQ and a lot of common sense. He can spot talent, he can recruit it, and he’s really good with kids.”

Kinne texted Traylor before Texas State’s victory over Baylor to thank him for all his support and encouragement through the years. Traylor did not see it until moments after his own team lost a 17–14 heartbreaker to Houston on the same day. He immediately fired back a congratulatory text.

When Kinne got his players alone in the locker room after the Bobcats’ 42–31 victory in Waco, his thoughts flashed to the furious pace of the past year, of so many players coming and going and the feeling that he might never catch up. He brought so many players into the program, in part, because so many were leaving from the roster he inherited. Some of them were players he couldn’t talk into staying.

In that joyous moment, he thanked the players who had stayed, grabbing defensive end Jordan Revels and telling him, “Man, I appreciate you for believing in us. I know you could have left, but you decided to stay and so I just appreciate you for that.”

“You get a young vibe from him,” linebacker Dan Foster, who came from Marshall, told the Austin American-Statesman. “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.”

There were tough times, too. The Bobcats were 4–1 and one of the most interesting stories in college football at the beginning of October when they went on the road and allowed Louisiana to score two touchdowns in the final six minutes of a 34–30 defeat. They were routed 77–31 by Arkansas State in the next-to-last game of the season before finishing with a 52–44 win over South Alabama. Beating Rice in the First Responder Bowl would give Texas State eight wins for the first time since 2008.

“This was not an easy year by any means,” Kinne said. “There were many times I was like, ‘Whew, I don’t know. Just put your head down and go to work because it’s not looking good.’

“So we were able to come out and make the most of it,” he continued. “I think the pride you saw in the alumni and the community, especially after we beat Baylor and got to the bowl game, it’s fun now. You see people in the stands, and you see the belief and the expectations. After you beat Baylor, people are like, ‘Oh, you should win every game.’ Well, that’s the way I feel, so I get it. We’re not there yet. There were a couple of games this year where we just didn’t know how to win yet. Hopefully, next year we don’t have those games.”

https://www.texasmonthly.com/arts-entertainment/texas-state-football-coach-gj-kinne-first-responder-bowl/

Kinne is a damned impressive young man. He has walked through some fires no one should ever have to endure. I've loosely followed his career from his HS days and he has done well in all phases, always looking upward. As an SWT alum I can only wish him the best.

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Tex Pete

Tex Pete 20136

Posted
Posted
37 minutes ago, F250 said:

yBAYLOR2-superJumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=

 

I’m not really defending whatever player the poster was talking about and certainly am not defending Art Briles. I am defending GJ Kinne for now.
 

As Shooter said, he’s been through some shit. I doubt his motives are to take in pieces of shit and let them be pieces of shit to win football games. 

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CleverNickname

CleverNickname 1291

Posted
Posted

 

https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2023/05/04/former-hawaii-high-school-football-stars-settle-civil-lawsuit-over-sex-assault-case/

JdL apparently plead "responsible" to sexual assault. So when Kinne says "he never plead guilty or was convicted" that is pure legal bullshit based on equivalent family court terminology.  So Kinne was legally correct and intentionally misleading. Allegedly JdL choked a 16 yo while his friend raped her. After his friend ejaculated he shouted, "It's my turn!" He admittted it in text massages to her. His punishment was to write an apology letter. In the civil suit settlement he admitted doing it. At least one TX State NIL refuses to participate in paying JdL. I hope this sites associated NIL would do the same re a Texas player.

So fuck Kinne. An heir to Briles indeed. 

 

 

 

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GJ Winne

GJ Winne 166

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Yuck indeed.  This has really fucked up the immaculate vibes we had following this amazing season and going into next season w/ so many players staying and a really favorable schedule.  Now our big stud QB is gone w/ a rapist replacing him.  Kinne has pissed away a world of support over this.  Really frustrating, especially given the big picture of the program trajectory.  Why can't we have nice things???

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 53956

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Jesus, this sounds exactly like Larry Teis making himself sound incompetent while trying to sound clever:

Quote

“His first week on the job, we went to the Texas High School Coaches Association’s offices,” Texas State athletic director Don Coryell told me, “and they were having one of their larger annual meetings with their coaches from across the state. My intention was to introduce G. J. as our new coach, but when he walked into the room, probably forty people came up to hug him and tell him it was great to see him again. I realized what kind of network he already had in place.”

Like, that network is exactly the kind of thing you should have asked about the first time you fucking interviewed him, you fucking waste of hair and blood...

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