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ACC 50th Anniversary Team - Mike McGee
8/19/2002 1:00:00 AM | Football
Aug. 19, 2002
By Johnny Moore
When you sit down and start to list the top football players in the history of the Atlantic Coast Conference, whether you are an N.C. State, North Carolina or Clemson fan, one of the first names you must mention is Duke's Mike McGee.
McGee is one of three Blue Devils on the ACC's golden anniversary team, an alphabetical listing of the top 50 players in league history. Concurrently with the ACC listing, the News & Observer of Raleigh announced its own top 50 and ranked McGee as the 10th best player ever in the league. Not bad for a lineman.
His selection to the top 50 was really no surprise, though, as just 25 years ago in 1977 he had been named as a tackle on the Silver Anniversary all-time ACC team.
There is absolutely no doubt that McGee is one of the greatest ever to play football in the ACC, and for that matter in the entire country. He is the most decorated of all Duke football players with an Outland Trophy as the nation's top lineman in 1959 and a place in the College Football Hall of Fame.
What made McGee great was not just his size, but his tremendous desire to play the game and his outstanding ability.
McGee was born the first week of December, 1938 - the same week Duke received its first Rose Bowl invitation. The son of a U.S. Coast Guard officer, he played his first organized football as a ninth grader as Capuchina High School in San Francisco. Luckily for Duke, his family moved to Elizabeth City, N.C., where he earned all-conference, all-state and All-America honors playing for coach Honey Johnson.
As a tackle he performed equally well on both sides of the football as a tenacious defender and a top-notch blocker. While he received his first collegiate starting assignment as a sophomore in the 1958 Orange Bowl, it wasn't until his junior year that he was really noticed. As a junior, following a 15-13 win over Illinois, his head coach, Bill Murray paid him his highest compliment. "He is the greatest lineman I have ever been associated with," Murray said. "If he's not a great football player, then there are no great football players."
He was named captain of the 1959 team and there was little doubt as to why. He was a true leader both on and off the field. As one teammate put it after hearing a stirring pregame oration by McGee, "When he grabs you by the arm, grits his teeth and stares you in the eye, it makes you want to play football."
His play that senior year drew accolades from sports writers all over the country. "Not since the bone-crushing days of Freddie Crawford has Duke been blessed with such a lineman," wrote Hugo Germino of the Durham Herald. Smith Barrier of the Greensboro Daily News simply said, "No better defensive guard anywhere."
But the best assessment of McGee may well have come from Ed Miles of the Atlanta Constitution, following a truly outstanding performance against Georgia Tech in 1959. "He is a great, great lineman," wrote Miles. "He plays as if he loves to give and take hard knocks."
In that game against the Yellow Jackets, McGee was truly amazing. With 44,000 Tech fans on hand at Grant Field to see their nationally ninth-ranked club face the Devils, No. 68 for the Devils put on quite a show. In the first quarter McGee made four solo tackles, in the second quarter two solos and two assists, in the third quarter three more solo tackles and in the fourth quarter three solos with one assist. To read the play-by-play sheet from that particular game shows exactly what McGee meant to the Devils.
McGee tackles Tibbetts for an 11-yard loss... McGee tackles Welch for a five-yard loss... McGee tackles Braselton for a four-yard loss... McGee tackles Braselton again for an eight-yard loss. Miles wrote in the Atlanta paper that one Tech fan commented, "It's not hard to follow the ball when Tech is running it. Just watch number 68 for Duke. He's always there." For his play in the 10-7 upset win over Tech, McGee was selected as the national lineman of the week, the first of many national honors to come his way.
Following his senior season he was selected as the North Carolina amateur athlete of the year, Atlantic Coast Conference football player of the year and athlete of the year, first team All-America and the Outland Trophy winner as the outstanding college lineman of the year. Following his graduation from Duke he was selected in the second round of the NFL Draft by the St. Louis Cardinals and was third in the NFL rookie of the year balloting. A neck injury cut short a very promising professional career. His outstanding play on the football field has brought him many honors including induction into the National Football Foundation College Football Hall of Fame, Orange Bowl Hall of Fame, Duke Sports Hall of Fame and the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame.
When he couldn't play the game any more, McGee quickly moved into coaching. He returned to Duke as an assistant coach under Bill Murray before moving on to assistant jobs at Wisconsin and Minnesota. His first head coaching job came in the state of North Carolina at East Carolina in 1970. He stayed in Greenville just one year before returning to his alma mater for the 1971 season. During his eight-year tenure as the Blue Devils' head coach, he compiled a 37-47-4 record with big wins over nationally-ranked Stanford and Tennessee.
"I look back on the eight years I coached football at Duke as the best of my life," McGee once said.
Since then, McGee has been able to turn his love for the game of football into a love for college athletics as a whole. Following his firing at Duke in 1978, McGee went to work on an administrative degree and received a Ph.D in Adult and Higher Education/Business Administration from the University of North Carolina in 1982. He became the athletics director at the University of Cincinnati in 1980, then moved on to the University of Southern California in the same role in 1984. In 1993 he became the director of athletics at the University of South Carolina, where he presently works.
The once rough and tough lineman, feared by so many opponents, is now regarded as one of the true leaders of college athletics, serving as the head of several NCAA committees. He's on the NCAA Cabinet with responsibilities pertaining to academics, eligibility and compliance. When it comes to pure football players, there is none better than Mike McGee. And when it comes to a strong belief in the principles of college athletics and it what it can do for young men and women, Dr. McGee has proven to be an all-star in that regard as well.
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