Football is a top priority in the mind of Kyle Shanahan. Many football coaches can say that, but the San Francisco 49ers head coach has repeatedly put his team ahead of other aspects of his life. After each season, he and his family will take some time away from home, vacationing together. It’s time Shanahan values because he knows that once the offseason work begins again, he will miss a lot of family time until the end of the next season.
As part of The Athletic’s five-part podcast series, “The Playcallers,” Shanahan shared another early story about an instance of him putting football first. It was during college at Texas, where the coach played wide receiver. He admits that, even then, he saw football as “life and death.”
“Even though I went to college to play football, which probably isn’t the best thing to tell everybody, but it was for me, and that’s what I saw in my mind,” Shanahan admits. “I was playing football. All I would do was work out because I wanted to be a receiver.”
Shanahan was willing to sacrifice everything for football, including his grades.
“I remember when I transferred to Texas, and we had finals during our bowl practices,” Shanahan shared. “We’re all supposed to miss the practice because we had a final, and I was the only one who was red-shirting because I transferred there. I’ve been waiting for this scrimmage, and I had a final on that day, and I just showed up to the scrimmage, and everyone was trying to make me leave, saying I’ll fail the class.
“And I had to argue with everyone there. Like, ‘I know I’ll fail the class, and that’s a decision I’m making right now. I’m not missing this practice.’ And even though I had a C in there, it turned into an F because I would not miss the practice. And it wasn’t that I was trying to show the coaches how committed I was. It was just how one-tracked my mind was.”
Shanahan never caught on as a player but knew he wanted to be part of the game somehow.
“I started getting into college and realizing, ‘Man, I might not be good enough to go to NFL,'” Shanahan shared. “What am I going to do next? And once I fully accepted I wasn’t a good enough player, it was like 3 hours later that was like, ‘I’m going to be such a good coach.'”
He went on to become a graduate assistant at UCLA before getting his NFL break as a quality control coach with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Shanahan moved up the coaching ranks through the Houston Texans, Washington Commanders, Cleveland Browns, and Atlanta Falcons before becoming the 49ers’ head coach in 2017.
You can listen to the entire podcast series, part of “The Athletic Football Show,” over at The Athletic.
