McKee has built quite the operation at Scott County
🎶Down home
Where they know you by name and treat you like family
Down home
A man's good word and a hand shake are all you need
Folks know
If they're fallin' on hard times, they can fall back home
Those of us raised up down home🎶
Songwriters: Josh Leo / Rick Bowles, 1990
Jim McKee is one of the best in the business. We can’t confirm but have certainly heard McKee can rub people the wrong way but that is probably expected. People don’t always like winners. People who are constantly “winning” bother some folks. McKee works hard, his teams play hard, and his yearly expectation is a KHSAA title. McKee has won 278-games, by our count. McKee has won nearly 80% of the games he has coached over a 30-year period (278/350) with a “Big Boy” title (6A) to his credit in 2013. McKee is also a “dad” and a farmer. He prides himself on all three vocations. He claims he would rather be known as a good father than a good coach. If that is true, he must be a tremendous father. We know this, he is one heck of a fine football coach.
HB Lyon, Scouting Director, “KPGFootball”
Georgetown, KY: My father is a doctor. Radiologist or not, Larry Long is a single generation off a working farm. My granddaddy (Fred Long) and his brother, Elvis, both farmed.
We aren’t talking sissified, tractor farming either. We’re talking an old wooden plow and a pair of mules-farming.
Daddy used to tell me a great story about how, when he was just a kid in the very early 50s, he would take up the yoke, and the mules, and plow a few turns around the field until Elvis had rolled and smoked himself a cigarette. When Uncle Elvis was through, Daddy would give him back the reigns and Elvis would resume plowing.
My grandfather claimed from his death bed, shortly before passing, that he could take an old wooden plow, a pair of mules, and “…make money farming tomorrow.” Grandaddy believed the “new-fangled” famers were lazy. Their farms were in hoc to the bank to purchase air-conditioned equipment they didn’t think they could farm without.
Now I called my grandaddy, “Daddy” or “Dad” about as much as I did, “Grandaddy.” It just saved time. I figured both Larry and Fred Long were my dads. Fred Long was just a dad, once removed.
“When the bank started owning people’s farms,” Fred Long told me, “that was the end of farming.” I didn’t know anything about that. I had never before farmed for a living.
Jim McKee knows all about that. McKee also knows all about sacrifice, hard work, being vested in what you’re doing, and many other laudable, commendable things. You see, Jim McKee is Tom McKee’s son, and Tom McKee knows farming.
Jim McKee knows farming too. However, McKee knows football better.
McKee is gaining on 300-wins with a win percentage close to 80%
KHSAA Statistical Website
McKee has been coaching football for 30 or so years. He is gaining on 300-wins and sure to surpass it with his winning at an 80% or so clip. McKee has a record, by our count, of 278-72.
McKee is 1-3 in title appearances. McKee made three (3) of those appearances in Kentucky 6A and a fourth (4th) appearance (a 2004 loss to Saint Xavier) when there weren’t but four (4) Kentucky classifications.
McKee knows about coaching his sons. All three (3) McKee boys; Colby, Cade, and Clay, played for McKee at Scott County.
For those out there who believe coaching your son is no different than coaching your other players, McKee has a message for you.
“If anybody who has coached their kids ever says, ‘Oh, he’s just somebody else,’ that’s all a lie,” Jim McKee told a reporter writing about Colby McKee signing his LOI (Letter of Intent) with Austin Peay. “That’s your son. He’s always called me Dad at practice and in the weight room, and so has Clay and so has Cade, and they always will.”
McKee continued, “We’ve won a lot of games here, and I might have 20 more years of coaching, but I hope I will be remembered as a great father more than a great coach.” According to his son, Colby, it wouldn’t hurt to be remembered as a great farmer.
“That’s one of my very favorite things outside of playing football is being on my family farm and getting work done and being with my grandfather,” Colby related. Aside from the farming thing, Colby is a “McKee.” To a McKee, “Football…is everything…”
McKee has grown into his role as a fixture in the Georgetown community. McKee has his Cardinals yearly in the title chase and Scott County is accustomed to making deep playoff runs with McKee at the helm.
Football…is everything
Colby McKee
McKee approaches the job just like a farmer would. Ray Graham recently told KPGFootball, “Coach McKee is the first guy to work and last guy to leave. He really drills an exceptional work ethic into the guys who come through his football program.”
Graham continued, “…that ability to go the extra mile, to start work well before the sun rises only to return home well after it sets; those are the characteristics Jim McKee brought with him to the football office from off the family farm.”
“McKee imparts good lessons, sound practices, and well implanted, well nourished roots into the hearts, souls, and lives of these kids,” Graham continued. “The success you see from them on the field is a natural result of that good seed being well cultivated. You get a bountiful harvest provided you nurture the land consistently, appropriately, and dutifully. Coach McKee does everything the right way. That is why he gets so much from his kids.”
McKee played collegiately at Centre College. Hall of Fame head football coach and the school’s all-timer in wins for whom the stadium is now named, Andy Frye, remembers McKee well.
“I was coaching at Centre [when McKee played here]. Joe McDaniel was the head football coach [at the time]. What I remember about McKee is he trained and prepared himself to be the best, and played with a relentless attitude and effort that made him a very good offensive lineman.”
Frye went on to relate, “McKee impacted, for the good, those who played around him.”
Frye continued, “As a coach, McKee’s expectations for his players have been no different than what he placed on himself as a player when he played for Centre. McKee’s men train hard, play hard, and give relentless effort in all that they do.”
These all sound like sound farming practices to me. I believe Fred Long, were he still around, would approve of how Jim McKee both farms and coaches. Fred Long would approve of the lessons being taught these Scott County kids.
I can almost hear him now, “Somebody tack up the mule team. We got some sod to turn.”
Yessir, Daddy; I’m on it.
🎶When I was a boy, I couldn't wait to leave this place
But now I wanna see my children raised
Down home...🎶
Josh Leo / Rick Bowles, 1990
This is Friday Night Fletch, reporting for KPGFootball, and we’re reminding you to PLAY THROUGH THE WHISTLE!
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