He’d taken hard hits and played through pain, faced criticism from fans and media and championed a losing cause when Dennis Franchione came under fire. He was forced to trust a new coach, learn a new system and then fight for his job after two seasons as Texas A&M’s starting quarterback.
And then he went down with a injury to his throwing shoulder two games into his final season - at New Mexico on Sept. 6 - and feared that his playing career might end just when he thought it was finally about to take flight.
He was angry and depressed, wondering what he had done to deserve a career so fraught with adversity. He let his emotions show, losing sight of his stature as the Aggies’ role model on and off the field.
“It was rough. I was just down,” McGee said Monday. “It was my senior year and all the crap that I went through since I’ve been here - it seemed like, ‘I can’t get a break, I can’t get break.’”
His demeanor changed so dramatically after the game that A&M first-year coach Mike Sherman called McGee to his office for a meeting.
Sherman talked about McGee’s family, the master’s degree he’ll earn next spring, his Christian faith, even his possible future in the NFL. He reminded McGee of the 29 consecutive starts he made before the shoulder injury, including two straight victories over archrival Texas.
“I said, ‘You think I’m going to feel sorry for you?’” Sherman said. “I said, ‘What else is there? It’s going to work out. Just have faith and keep working.’ And he has. That was the only time I ever saw him sulking around a little bit.”
McGee walked out with a brighter outlook and a renewed commitment to the team. The shoulder injury has lingered and sophomore Jerrod Johnson has started eight of the last nine games, but McGee has patiently helped Johnson learn the position and looked for other ways to lead.
“I can’t be out there on the field. I can’t be looking at guys in the huddle,” McGee said. “I can only do what I can do on the sidelines. Whatever my role is for that weekend, I’m going to do the very best I can to make the people around me better. That’s always what I felt my No. 1 goal is, as a leader. I feel like that’s what leaders do to make people better.”
The Aggies (4-6 overall, 2-4 Big 12 Conference) play at Baylor (3-7, 1-5) on Saturday, and McGee isn’t likely to play unless Johnson gets hurt or the game turns into a rout.
He’s thrown only 29 passes since getting injured, hardly the season he envisioned after Sherman brought a pro-style offense that arguably was a better fit for his skills than former coach Franchione’s zone-read option.
Sherman is confident that McGee will play in the pros. McGee just wants a chance to impress scouts and hopes they don’t judge him by the end of his college career.
“God had a different plan for me this year, and I look back on it and hopefully I’ll be able to do this down the road,” he said. “I wish I could’ve thrown for a bunch of yards and had a lot of success, but there are a lot of things I’ve learned through the tough times and the adversity.”
This time last year, McGee was acting as team spokesman as the pressure mounted for Franchione’s dismissal after news broke about a secretive newsletter that one of his assistants was distributing to boosters for a price. McGee was one of Franchione’s most vocal supporters, but Franchione resigned after the Aggies’ 38-30 win over the Longhorns Nov. 23.
Earlier last season, McGee lashed out at reporters who questioned why A&M wasn’t passing more effectively. Then, he returned to College Station after the Aggies’ 34-17 loss in Miami and found a nasty note from a fan on the windshield of his car.
Looking back, McGee says it’s all made him a better person, taught him lessons that he wouldn’t have learned if he’d accepted one of the scholarship offers he said he got from Southern California, Georgia or Texas.
“I don’t regret ever, for one second, coming to Texas A&M,” said McGee, a former record-setting quarterback at Burnet. “Certainly, everybody else, it seems like, has had success and we haven’t. But, hey, this is a special place, a special university with so many great people.
“You don’t get to win at everything you do,” he said. “You’re going to have bumps along the way and you’ve just got to learn to just keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep marching on with the right approach and the right attitude. You’ve just got to have that faith and that trust and keep doing things right. In the end, it’s going to be for good.”
The Aggies are 17-12 since McGee became the starter for the last game of 2005. He got a standing ovation when he came onto the field late in Saturday’s 66-28 loss to Oklahoma, his final game at Kyle Field. He guided A&M on one last scoring drive in the fourth quarter and finished 10-of-19 passing for 82 yards.
McGee will go down as one of the most prolific passers in school history. He’s one of only five quarterbacks to top 5,000 passing yards and he’ll rank among the top five in career completions and completion percentage.
But McGee said he’ll measure his career by much more than the numbers.
“I’ve learned so much here, handling the tough things. That’s priceless,” he said. “That’s not just a trophy you can look at. Maybe I have an impact on one guy, maybe he remembers down the road, ‘I remember when Stephen went through some stuff, and that helped me see some things and grow as a person.’ If that’s the case, I can feel good about what I’ve done here.”
