McCoy arrives with a heavy heart
OU defensive tackle loses his mother on brink of his first official season
McCoy arrives with a heavy heart

By Jenni Carlson

Published: August 4, 2007

NORMAN — Life should be perfect right now for Gerald McCoy.

Finished with his redshirt season, the Oklahoma defensive tackle will now spend Saturdays knocking heads instead of twiddling thumbs. He is on the verge of playing for the Sooners, following in the footsteps of Lee Roy Selmon and Tommie Harris, living out a crimson-colored dream.

If only his mother were here to see it.

Patricia McCoy died a month before her son reported for preseason practice. Only 53 years old, she developed two blood clots that doctors removed. She spent three weeks in the hospital and showed signs of improvement.

"She was doin' real good in the hospital, really,” McCoy said Friday morning during OU's football media day. "She was doin' great.”

He shook his head.

"One morning, they just said her heart couldn't hold her.”

McCoy's life has been less than perfect ever since.

The big fellow has always had a soft spot for his parents, Pat and Keith. He considers his happiest days to be the ones spent with his folks at home in south Oklahoma City. They'd talk, and they'd laugh, and they'd have the best time.

At a time when most teenagers tolerate their parents, McCoy looks up to his.

His father taught him to look people in the eye and keep God first. His mother taught him to be his own man and be happy in life.

Never was that lesson more valuable than last season. The Southeast High School product was USA Today's national defensive player of the year as a senior. He was the top-ranked defensive tackle in that recruiting class. He was tabbed an impact player.

Sure, playing defensive tackle as a true freshman is tough — no margin for error when the guy coming at you starts only inches away — but Harris had done it.

Why not McCoy?

He chuckles now at the notion.

"I got here, I said, ‘What really am I supposed to do as a defensive tackle?'” McCoy said. "In high school, I was just trying to get all the tackles. It's so different in college.”

Veteran defensive tackle Cory Bennett said, "Most people would be kind of upset about having to redshirt, especially being the No. 1 defensive tackle in the nation. He looked at it as an opportunity to learn and develop as a football player.”

McCoy has done just that.

"He's just made tremendous improvement in his technique and his fundamentals and his understanding,” Sooner defensive coordinator Brent Venables said. "He's really had a very humbled attitude from the very first day he's been here. So much of our society today ... everybody wants it now, and when kids don't have it, the easy thing is to quit or go somewhere else or to question everybody else.”

Not McCoy. Then again, that goes back to something his folks taught him. They always told their kids to make their own way, not conforming to the ways of the world, not doing things because everybody else was doing them.

"We always encouraged them to be leaders, not followers,” Pat McCoy said a few days before her son signed with the Sooners in early 2006. "You don't fall in behind people. You make people follow you.”

So it was that the day his mama died, McCoy stood in front of his entire football family and told them about her. How faithfully she followed the program. How highly she thought of everyone. How much she cared about them.

Both players and coaches marvel at McCoy's strength that day and every day since.

McCoy admits there are tough times and heartaches. He lives with uncertainty; doctors checked his mom's heart after she died and found no problems. He copes with faith; "God just called her up, so can't argue with it. He's never wrong.”

McCoy smiled.

"I'll be all right,” he said. "I really will.”

Standing on the Owen Field turf, he steadied his gaze. Like the morning sun climbing over the top of the stadium towering behind him, his eyes glistened.

"I'm gonna be good.”

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