Back in 2016, Joey McGuire wasn’t looking to leave Cedar Hill, a program he had built into a three-time state champion.
But after spending several years declining offers to jump to college programs, he was intrigued by the possibility of working for Matt Rhule, who had just been hired as Baylor’s head coach.
“It was hard,” McGuire said. “My wife, that Sunday morning I was going to meet Matt Rhule in Hillsboro and interview, she goes, ‘Joey, why are you going? You are never going to leave Cedar Hill.’ I love that place, but I told her, there is something about this guy. I want to find out what he’s about.”
McGuire liked what he learned, made the leap to college and started as a tight ends coach at Baylor under Rhule, who later became the head coach of the NFL’s Carolina Panthers. McGuire worked his way up to associate head coach at Baylor, quickly became one of the most respected assistant coaches in all of college football and is now entering his fourth season as the head coach at a fast-rising Texas Tech program that could challenge for a spot in the College Football Playoff this year.
High School Sports
In an interview with The Dallas Morning News at the THSCA coaching school last month, McGuire said he thinks it’s getting easier for Texas high school football coaches to jump to college. He sees several Dallas-area coaches who would be good fits at the next level, but the hard part for colleges is getting them to leave the powerhouse high school programs they are at.
Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire listens to a question during Big 12 Media Days at the Ford Center, Tuesday, July 8, 2025, in Frisco.
Elías Valverde II / Staff Photographer
Especially when some top high school head coaches in D-FW make $140,000 to $165,000 per year.
“Lee Wiginton [at Allen], he’s ready to coach college football right now if he chooses to do that,” McGuire said. “When you are operating a 6A football program from seventh grade up, he probably has as big a staff as I do, and he has more players that he is responsible for. [At Cedar Hill] I was responsible for two middle schools, a ninth-grade campus and a high school. I had about 30 coaches. It prepares you for the things that you’ve got to do at the college level.”
Wiginton is 29-10 in three seasons as the head coach at five-time state champion Allen, the largest school in the state. He said he wouldn’t seek out a college job just to get a foot in the door, and it would have to be the perfect situation — and the perfect boss — for him to even consider leaving the high school game.
“It’s not one of those things that I’ve given a lot of thought to,” Wiginton said. “I absolutely love what I do. It’s one of those things that I would be incredibly intrigued by, but it wouldn’t be about the allure of coaching college football. It would be more about the allure of getting to learn from and be around someone that you have so much respect for at that level — a Joey McGuire and so many others. As I’m on the tail end of my career, I would love to spend the last 10, 12 years serving them. That would be very intriguing to me.”
McGuire listed Southlake Carroll head coach Riley Dodge, South Oak Cliff defensive coordinator Kyle Ward and DeSoto head coach Claude Mathis as others who would make good college coaches. All of them held college jobs before.
“The DC at SOC, Ward, he’s phenomenal,” McGuire said. “Riley Dodge, I actually thought he was going a couple of years ago. Claude Mathis did it. He’s another guy that could jump back in. It prepared me to coach at the college level having to coach against guys like that.”
With his team coming off a state runner-up finish in Class 6A Division II and preparing for its first practice of the season Monday, Dodge has a record of 93-9 at his alma mater that is an eight-time state champion. He worked as a graduate assistant at Texas A&M and as an offensive quality control coach at Texas, and that kicked off a spectacular coaching career and led to him being the youngest 11-man football coach in the state when he was hired at Carroll in 2018.
“I cut my teeth on the college side, and we all have goals and aspirations,” Dodge said in an interview with The News in June. “But I’m really fortunate to be in one of the top jobs in the state of Texas and the country. I’ll never leave Southlake Carroll for another high school job. I’m very confident in saying that. I love where I coach, and love the kids I coach, but if an opportunity comes down the road …”
He never finished that last sentence, but he did say that he and members of his staff have turned down opportunities to leave Carroll. His father, Todd Dodge, coached at North Texas after winning four state titles during a legendary run as Carroll’s coach, and he would have liked to have had his son on his staff at one point.
“There have been opportunities when he was just first getting into it,” said Todd Dodge, who also won three state titles at Austin Westlake and is now the head coach at Lovejoy. “I would have liked for him to be with me when I came back out of college coaching at Marble Falls and when we went to Westlake. That probably would have been the window at that time, which would have been a five-year window.”
Ward worked as a graduate assistant and cornerbacks coach at Texas A&M and as a graduate assistant at Boise State. He is now the defensive coordinator for a South Oak Cliff team that won back-to-back Class 5A Division II state titles in 2021 and 2022 and that has played in four consecutive state championship games.
“I won’t close the door to anything, but most people who know me know how much I love where I am. I’m living a dream here,” Ward said. “I can’t say I wouldn’t do it, but it would have to be a pretty good deal. I’m not at the point in my career where I’m going to go back and be a grad assistant.”
Mathis is 144-31 in two stints as DeSoto’s head coach and won back-to-back 6A Division II state titles in 2022 and 2023. He left DeSoto to become SMU’s running backs coach for the 2015 and 2016 seasons.
“I think it’s hard to get a college job, but when they started adding GAs and general managers and stuff like that, it opens the door a lot more for high school coaches now than it did before,” Mathis said.
He said he has had opportunities to return to college coaching and didn’t take them, adding, “I love high school football.” But he did talk about the perks of coaching in college.
“You have a chance to deal with great kids 24/7, every day,” Mathis said. “All of your day was about that sport. You didn’t have to deal with nothing else, and I loved it. One of the things I really love about college is recruiting. I love to go beat other coaches on a kid. Recruiting is one of the things where you get to meet families, you get to have relationships.”
McGuire said he has 12 former high school coaches on his staff, and that includes two former D-FW head coaches — Kenny Perry from Arlington Sam Houston, Haltom and Arlington Bowie and Zarnell Fitch from Lincoln. Their jobs at Tech, and the jobs held by other former Dallas-area head coaches now coaching in college, reinforce what Mathis said about the multitude of ways to work at the NCAA level.
Perry is the associate head coach and special teams coordinator, while Fitch coaches the defensive linemen. Former SOC, Terrell and Lancaster coach Chris Gilbert is a special assistant to the head coach at Texas, former Garland coach Jeff Jordan is the assistant athletics director for player personnel at TCU, ex-Arlington Martin coach Bob Wager is the director of high school relations at TCU, former South Oak Cliff coach Emmett Jones is the passing game coordinator and wide receiver coach at Oklahoma and ex-Parish Episcopal coach Scott Nady is the executive director of acquisition and retention and a special assistant to the head coach at SMU.
“We always look at if somebody leaves [our program], who are we going to replace them with,” McGuire said. “I always look at the high school ranks to see if there is somebody that can help the program.”
Jeff Traylor won three state titles and had two state runner-up finishes at Gilmer, and he is now the head coach at UT-San Antonio. He led the school to a 46-20 record in his first five years at the helm, and under his watch, UTSA has recorded the most wins among FBS teams from the state of Texas since 2020.
That can help others break into the business.
“I hope we make it better for them,” Traylor said at the THSCA coaching school. “The better we do, the more it’s going to help them if they come to this crazy world. The best job I ever had was in Gilmer, Texas. If it wasn’t for the money and my ego, I should go back there. Those are really good jobs. Obviously, the more success the Texas high school football coaches have in this business, the better it’s going to help the next guy if they want to do it.”
Find more high school sports coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.
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