Brent Key, a 1997 graduate and former all-state football player for Hewitt-Trussville High School, is interviewed after leading Georgia Tech to a 24-21 victory over No. 10 Florida State in Dublin, Ireland, in the 2024 college football season opening game.
College football’s 2024 season kicked off Saturday with Hewitt-Trussville High School alum Brent Key taking center stage with the biggest win of his coaching career.
Key’s Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets upset 10th-ranked Florida State 24-21 in a game played in Dublin, Ireland. The Yellow Jackets were 10½-point underdogs but got the winning margin on a 44-yard field goal by Aiden Burr as time expired.
The victory was Georgia Tech’s first over a Top 10 team since 2015, snapping a 10-game losing streak against such opponents. But it continued a trend under Key, who was an all-state offensive lineman for Hewitt-Trussville in the mid-1990s under Hall of Fame Coach Jack Wood. Key is now 5-0 vs. top 25-ranked ACC teams since taking over as the Yellow Jackets’ head coach four games into the 2022 season.
Georgia Tech rolled up 190 yards rushing against a highly regarded FSU defense and controlled the game throughout at the line of scrimmage. That certainty fits the personality of their head coach, who was known as a hard-nosed blocker at Hewitt-Trussville, was a standout at Georgia Tech as a player under hard-nosed coach George O’Leary then coached under both O’Leary at Central Florida and under Alabama’s Nick Saban before returning to his collegiate alma mater.
Asked the key to the victory in the postgame interview, he gave the early quote of the season that might still be a meme come December.
“Are you kidding me? Run the baaaaaaall,” the 1997 alumnus of Hewitt-Trussville High proclaimed.
