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Bama News
The college football coaching ranks are often referred to as being like a type of fraternity, where everyone knows nearly everybody else and one can't face another team without having some sort of connection on the other sideline.
For Middle Tennessee coach Rick Stockstill, though, the 2023 season opener with the Alabama Crimson Tide will be a little different. One of the few head coaches who has been at his school longer than Nick Saban, he's been to Tuscaloosa with more than his football team.
Stockstill and his wife Sara have two kids. Former Blue Raider quarterback Brent Stockstill is in his third season on the Middle Tennessee staff and his second as the quarterbacks coach and passing game coordinator. After playing for his father from 2015-18, he returned as a full-time member of his coaching staff in January 2021.
His daughter, Emily, though, went to Alabama, and worked for the football program under Nick Saban.
"She had a great experience," he said on Monday. "I mean whatever they won, three SEC championships, two national championships, they went to the playoffs all the years that she was there. She was involved in the recruiting part of it. She was involved in the logistics part of it so it was a great experience for her to be around that. And then they go in the SEC Championship [Game], then she'd go with us to the Bahamas Bowl, and she'd come back and go to the playoffs with them.
"She had a great experience and just being around a lot of you know good coaches down there. [Former running backs coach] Burton Burns who's not coaching there anymore but a lot of good people, Coach Saban obviously, but it's a great experience for her and she'll be down there this week also to rekindle her friendships with the Alabama people."
As for her allegiance after kickoff (6:30 p.m. CT, SEC Network)?
"Hopefully she'll be rooting for her daddy and her brother," he said.
