Growing up in Clay, Alabama, right in the heart of the Iron Bowl country, had its perks for Brent Key. From being always surrounded by a sporting culture to collecting baseball cards as a kid since age 7, it won’t be a stretch to say that Brent Key was always destined to go big in the sporting world. “I was always wrapped up in sports, playing basketball and baseball,” reflected Key. The sporting culture did help, but the major influence, according to Key, was his mother.

It’s never easy to raise kids as a single mother, and it comes with its challenges and responsibilities. But for Key, being raised by his mother meant he never felt a void or a need for a father figure. Key’s mother was both a strict disciplinarian and loving when she needed to. Key recalled in an earlier interview how his mother used to set strict curfew timings, and even getting a single minute late meant trouble for him.

“When I started driving at sixteen, I had a 10:00 curfew. If it was 10:01, it might as well have been 1:01 in the morning!” recalled Key. The discipline then instilled by Key’s mother helped Key earn a scholarship from Georgia Tech after his senior year at Hewitt-Trussville High. “My mom was the mom and the dad. My mom was the disciplinarian and the encourager. I wasn’t the most straight-lined young man walking through the streets of Clay, Alabama. I’ll tell you that,” said Key.

Key’s mother was a third-grade teacher in Birmingham, Alabama, and provided a stable foundation through Brent Key’s highs and lows. And that also meant sacrifices that she had to make for Brent, as the Georgia Tech head coach reminisced about how his mother never would miss football games and donned the role of a father figure, too. Key calls those sacrifices the reason for his success and “one of the happiest times” of his life.

“She made the sacrifices to never miss a Little League game, you know, never miss a football game when she could have been doing a lot of other things in her life, and she didn’t. Those sacrifices, I mean, that’s it, pale in comparison, but what I do is such a small task compared to what she had to do in my young life,” said Brent Key. Moreover, when Key became a head coach, his mother always stood by his side.

For instance, when Key was fired from UCF after a disappointing 0-12 season in 2015, he acknowledged at the time how his mother’s support was instrumental in his bouncing back. Just after joining Alabama’s O-line coach in 2016, his mother’s support worked, and in 2017, Key helped the team to a national championship. From then on, his alma mater, Georgia Tech, came calling, where he became the head coach after Geoff Collins’ firing. Now at Georgia Tech, the head coach is instilling the same morals that he got from his mom.

Brent Key talks about instilling the same morals in his players that his mother taught

Brent Key has been at Georgia Tech since 2022, initially becoming the interim head coach and later being promoted to the official head coach of the program. It was, of course, never easy to turn around the program that had a 10-28 record under Collins, but Brent Key couldn’t care less about the odds. The result? The head coach led the team to back-to-back winning seasons and bowl appearances in 2023 and 2024, notching up seven wins each year. Now in 2025, Key is planning to breach that double-digit win mark.

Before that, Key is working to instill in his players the values his mother once instilled in him. “One of the happiest times I get as the head coach is when I hear my players talk about the number one thing they’ve learned is how to treat women. But because my mom, my wife, and my daughter they’re the most special women in the world, most special people in my life. And to hear my players reflect that and how they know to treat women, I mean, that really makes it worthwhile,” said the Yellow Jackets’ head coach.

Brent Key is married to his wife, Danielle Key, whom he met at Georgia Tech when he was playing as an offensive lineman. Together, the couple has a beautiful daughter, Harper. As for his mother, Key mentioned visiting her recently with his daughter and how, before every home game, he blows a kiss, it’s dedicated to his mother, and a tribute to the sacrifices she has made in her life for the head coach.