Ask Texas State head football coach G.J. Kinne if Fort Worth ever crosses his mind, and you’ll find the answer is an emphatic “yes” — and it has little to do with the fact that he once played in the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl.
Kinne has deep roots here. His family tree has shed more than a few acorns in Fort Worth over the years.
His grandparents were Fort Worth people.
“My grandma — she passed away last year — would always say [to his grandfather], ‘Gary, when are you going to take me back to Fort Worth? I’m tired of Dallas,’” Kinne said Monday night at Billy Bob’s Texas, the world’s largest honky-tonk, which hosted a welcome dinner of barbecue — is there anything else? — for Texas State and Rice, the combatants in this year’s Armed Forces Bowl.
The game will be played Friday at TCU’s Amon G. Carter Stadium. Kickoff is slated for noon.
Kinne’s upstart Bobcats enter the game at 6–6, with an alum who later became president, while Rice — an erstwhile member of the Southwest Conference we used to see every other year, back in Galileo’s age — is 5–7 and has no presidential alum. The Bobcats are a consensus heavy favorite. Some oddsmakers have them 14.5-point favorites. (Buy tickets here.)
The game represents a bowl rematch. Texas State, making its third bowl appearance — and third consecutive — in school history, defeated Rice 45–21 in the 2023 First Responder Bowl in Dallas.
Kinne, 37, has history in the game as a player. He played quarterback for Tulsa in the Golden Hurricane’s 24–21 loss to BYU in the 2011 game. BYU scored a touchdown with 11 seconds left to win. Kinne passed for 214 yards and three touchdowns.
There’s an asterisk, however. That game was played at SMU while the Amon Carter underwent a makeover Chip and Joanna Gaines could only dream of.
Originally from Mesquite — we’ll get to that — Kinne was a highly rated quarterback recruit out of high school who went on to be a three-year starter at Tulsa. Afterward, he bounced around the NFL and CFL for five years. In high school, Kinne played for Jeff Traylor, the current head coach at UTSA, at Gilmer.
His father, Gary Joe, was a standout linebacker at Baylor and later coached at Allen High School, Kaufman High School, Mesquite High School, and Canton High School before taking a job on the staff of Guy Morriss at Baylor. After Baylor, Gary Joe went back to the high school level.
We were talking about all that and the state of Texas State football when G.J. Kinne interjected: “You know my grandparents are from Fort Worth?”
As a matter of fact, I did not know that.
The first Gary Joe Kinne and Nancy Jean Powell met at Paschal High School as sophomores in 1957 while in drama class. Both were born and raised here.
According to her 2024 obituary, Nancy “would happily tell the story about the day her drama teacher asked her to help another student in the class study his lines.” That student was Gary, of course. He couldn’t have possibly recalled them otherwise, she proudly declared for the rest of her life. Sounds like drama. Or maybe comedy.
Nancy followed Gary Joe Sr. to Tyler Junior College, where he played football. Her father, according to Nancy, tried to bribe her with a car if she would go to Baylor instead. Nothing doing. This was love, and, like all the rest their age of that generation and all the others, they were too dumb to know this was crazy.
The two wed in 1961 at University Baptist Church, in the original small stucco church today known as the W. Ray Watson Chapel, across the street from TCU. They lived in Fort Worth until pursuing opportunity in Mesquite.
It sounds as if the dutiful Nancy agreed only because of the deal she cut at the altar.
Gary Joe Sr.’s parents — Jack and Florence Kinne — moved to Fort Worth from West Texas in the early 1940s. They never left. Both are buried at Laurel Land.
Nancy’s parents — Laurence and Maxie Powell — moved to Fort Worth in 1947. He was a postal inspector. They, too, are buried at Laurel Land.
And on this coming Friday at noon, Gary Joe Kinne III — G.J. — is looking to do them all proud.
Now, Paul Harvey, even you know the rest of the story.