Legendary Georgia high school football coach dies at age 83

Shannon Jarvis, a 20-year former Georgia head coach and now Elbert County Schools’ assistant superintendent, played for McFerrin in the early 1990s at Elbert County and joined McFerrin’s South Gwinnett football staff in 1998 before starting the Mill Creek program in 2004.

“I got to play for him and coach for him, and I got to experience both sides, and the simplest way I can say it is that he’s as great a human being that I have ever known,” Jarvis said. “He changed my life, and everything I’ve done in my career was trying to model after him, the way he went about everything in his life, from how he loved his players and his family to the detail and organization of his practice plans.”

McFerrin’s first South Gwinnett team, with future Georgia star David Greene at quarterback, went 8-5 after an 0-10 finish the season before.

“He was a gentleman, but don’t think there wasn’t dog in him; he was fiercely competitive,” Jarvis said. “When it came to game-planning and making decisions to win a game, he’s the best I’ve been around.’'

Other prominent Georgia head coaches who first worked on McFerrin staffs include Dave Hunter, Mark Crews, Mickey Conn, Josh Lovelady, John Small, Randall Owens, Shannon Jarvis and Ben Hall. Hunter (Brookwood), Crews (Brookwood), Conn (Grayson) and Lovelady (Mill Creek) later won state championships in Georgia’s highest classification.

One of McFerrin’s closest friends was Hunter, who joined McFerrin’s staff at Peachtree in the 1970s and took over for him in 1983 after Peachtree was the Class 4A runner-up to Valdosta.

“He was such a positive, positive guy,” said Hunter, who met with McFerrin for weekly lunches in recent years until McFerrin’s health worsened. “He influenced so many people. He was so detailed and organized as a coach. I learned a lot from him. He was a true gentleman.”

In McFerrin’s first season at Peachtree, McFerrin’s veer quarterback was Chris Welton, later the starting rover on Georgia’s 1980 national championship team. Welton said the only other coaches in his life who had a similar impact on him were Vince Dooley and Erk Russell at Georgia.

“I stopped for a late lunch at Golden Corral today, and folks in Newnan got to see a 66-year-old man crying,” Welton said. “This one hits hard. Coach McFerrin was the first coach I’d ever had who made it very clear at the outset that, with the whole team, that it was not only OK to tell a teammate or coach that you loved him, but it was sort of the expectation. We’re talking 1976. Things were a little different then. That quote was a revelation to me.”

Welton also was moved by McFerrin’s attention to detail. McFerrin brought to Peachtree from Tennessee his veer offense. From his four previous seasons as coach at Sullivan Central, McFerrin had compiled one full reel of tape for each play that Peachtree and Welton would run that season. Welton studied them, and Peachtree went 10-1-1 after going 2-7-1 the year before, a pattern that McFerrin repeated at almost every stop.

In his final game as a head coach, McFerrin beat the odds one last time, as Jefferson defeated No. 1-ranked Calhoun 31-14 for the Class 3A title in the Georgia Dome. McFerrin remained active in coaching clinics for years and spent many Friday nights at games where his former players or assistants were head coaches. McFerrin was inducted into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 2018.

“I feel that being positive is extremely important in any situation,” McFerrin told the AJC in an interview that year. “This must include the entire staff. You can’t have five or six of your staff encouraging your players and one or two berating certain players and telling them they’re no good. I would tell our coaches all the time, ‘Coach your guys like you would coach your son.’ And I hoped they liked their own sons.”

McFerrin’s son Rob, a retired longtime school administrator and athletic director, told the AJC of the news of his father’s death. He said that his father had battled dementia in recent years and moved into a memory care center last year.

Funeral services are planned for 1 p.m. July 8 at Lighthouse World Outreach Center in Monroe. A reception will follow at the First United Methodist Church on Broad Street in Monroe.