This Joe Moorhead recruiting story is a great window into the lives of coaches

They say recruiting never stops, and Joe Moorhead told a great -- or harrowing -- story to illustrate that reality.

It's a weekend afternoon in early June 2017. Penn State offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead is at lunch with his family during a break in his youngest son's travel baseball tournament. Picture perfect stuff for any dad, right? In fact, it's almost too perfect. Any seasoned coach would've had his spidey senses tingling to DEFCON 1 that his phone was about to ring and, sure enough, Moorhead's did.

"When the conversation begins with ‘Coach, do you have a second to talk?’ it’s usually not headed down the right path," Moorhead said on the Saturday Down South podcast.

The person on the line was Penn State quarterback commit Justin Fields, who Moorhead no doubt suspected was about to become a former Penn State quarterback commit.

“I walked out and Justin kinda explained his reasoning and what he was going to do. Certainly didn’t like it or understand it, but, you know, that’s our job," Moorhead said.

The news and the impending fallout was bad enough for Moorhead professionally, but he also had to manage the fallout on the home front.

"My youngest one is a freshman in high school now, but gave him the news. When we got home, he locked himself in his room and was crying. I had to go and console him because he was crying for like an hour and a half that we lost Justin. So yes, I distinctly remember how that all went down.”

The story took several twists and turns from there. 

Penn State took a commitment from a lightly-recruited quarterback named Will Levis the following month, while Fields pledged to Georgia in October. Moorhead left Penn State to become the head coach at Mississippi State that November.

Without the No. 2 recruit in the class of 2018 on campus, redshirt freshman Sean Clifford took the QB1 job in 2019 and kept it through this past season, which pushed Levis to Kentucky. 

Fields later returned to the story when he transferred from Georgia to Ohio State where, unfortunately for Penn State, he blossomed into the player Moorhead knew he'd become back in 2017. He accounted for 78 touchdowns in 22 games as a Buckeye, leading Ohio State to two Big Titles, two CFPs, and the 2020 national title game.  

In two games against Penn State, the 2-time Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year and 2019 Heisman Trophy finalist threw for 506 yards with six touchdowns and no interceptions in two Ohio State victories.

But this story is not about that, at least not to me. Moorhead's story is a picture-perfect window into how when coaches talk about coaching is more than just a job to them, about how they -- and, by extension, their families -- put their whole lives into it, this is what they mean.