Blake Gideon called his mom and asked for a ride. A lingering shoulder injury from his time playing football at the University of Texas forced a medical discharge from the United States Air Force. Months earlier, Gideon called his father with news. He was retiring from the NFL and following his lifelong dream of serving his country in the special forces. 

Now, he needed a new dream. And a ride home. 

“I was probably going to end up somewhere around athletics because of my personality and mindset,” Gideon said at media day ahead of the Peach Bowl. “I don’t think someone with my level of urgency and franticness would bode well working at Bank of America. There’s an edge in sports that is addicting to me.” 

Most coach’s kids grow up drawing up plays for their dad and dreaming of scoring touchdowns for the hometown team. Not Blake Gideon. He wasn’t drawn to football for the glitz and glamor. He craved the blood and the guts. The sweat and the tears. It was his dad that was denying him the chance to knock heads with his friends. 

“That boyhood nature of wanting to go be physical and tough, that’s what drew me to football,” Gideon said. “I liked the brutal part of the game. Being able to hit someone and not get in trouble for it.” 

Steve Gideon moved to Leander 24 years ago to become the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach for the Lions. He became the head coach a few years later. Steve brought with him a spread offense with zone-read principles unique to the Cen-Tex area and a supremely athletic sixth grader. A son that wasn’t allowed to play football until the seventh grade. 

“Blake begged me every day in the sixth grade to let him play Pop Warner football with his buddies,” Steve remembered. “I’d tell him, ‘Your time is coming. Be patient.’ That’s a hard thing for young men. He just loved the physicality of the game.” 

Gideon was a star for his dad’s Lions by the time his father noticed something concerning halfway through his sophomore season. Gideon, who had won the district championship in the 100 meters as an eighth grader, was no longer winning conditioning drills. He was the most athletic, and the most competitive, player on the team. Steve knew something wasn’t right. Call it a father’s intuition. 

Gideon was a tough kid who grew into a tough man. That’s how he started 52 consecutive games at Texas. That’s why he retired from football to join the Air Force in 2013 after a year on the practice squad for the Denver Broncos. He hunts hogs with a knife and wanted to be in the special forces. And it was because of his father and his upbringing. 

“We just don’t wait around and massage our shoulders for too long in the Gideon household,” Gideon said. “I don’t think I would’ve recovered from things that happened to me as a young player here had it not been for my upbringing.” 

Toughness became a strength for Gideon. He’d need it to handle adversity on and off the field during his time as a starting safety on the Forty Acres. He was a captain on the 2010 team that went 5-7. His dropped interception against Texas Tech would’ve haunted lesser men. And his mom, Ralene, battled past cancer. 

But it was also a weakness. Steve noticed that Gideon wasn’t winning conditioning drills halfway through his sophomore season at Leander. His son was hiding back pain. A trip to the orthopedic doctor revealed a broken back Gideon suffered while jumping into an unfit long jump pit during the previous track season. Steve shut Gideon down for the rest of the sophomore season, and it cost him a budding baseball career. He could no longer create enough torque to hit homers or throw a fastball. 

“I was abusing that kid and I didn’t even know it,” Steve said with a father’s guilt and a coach’s resolve. “He was so tough. He didn’t want to let the team down.” 

He’d need that toughness again after the medical discharge. His first phone call was home. His second phone call was to his former defensive coordinator, Will Muschamp, who was now the head coach at Florida. Gideon needed a job. Muschamp let him work 23 hours a day as a GA. 

Those grueling days as a GA are a truth teller for coaches. A rite of passage. The itch is in you, or it is not. Gideon didn’t let a broken back stop him. Or on- and off-field tragedy. He spent hours in a pool treading water as a teenager to rehab his back. Work didn’t scare him. Gideon followed Muschamp from Florida to Auburn before heading out on his own as a defensive back coach at Western Carolina. And eventually back to Texas. 

Gideon was a captain at Texas when the Longhorns fell from the college football mountaintop. He’s returned to the Forty Acres as an assistant coach to help sherpa the program back to the summit. And he’s found a mini-me along the way in All-American Michael Taaffe. 

The comparisons between Gideon and Taaffe are obvious. They’re both white safeties from the Austin area who became fixtures in the Longhorn lineup because of their competitiveness and sheer will. That’s not a coincidence. Taaffe grew up a Longhorn fan and even took a picture with Gideon back in his playing days when the young Taaffe was 8 or 9 years old. That picture resurfaced in a team meeting, and that’s led to Taaffe’s label as Gideon Jr. 

“We get compared a lot – not sure he likes it,” Taaffe joked ahead of the Peach Bowl. “He was a pretty good player here, so I’ll take it.” 

Gideon believes the student has overtaken the master. 

“There are similarities in our game, but Mike is his own man and a much better player than I ever was.”

Gideon was a starting safety at Texas the last time the Longhorns played for a national title game – a loss to Alabama in the Rose Bowl after Colt McCoy was injured early in the game. He’s now in charge of the safeties for a Horns squad that is one win away from reaching the championship game in the first year of the 12-team College Football Playoff. He’s seen Texas in its highs and its lows as both a player and a coach. 

Gideon won’t take much credit for the resurrection. He believes Texas’ rise isn’t a secret. The reason is the same as it was when DKR and Mack Brown roamed the sidelines: Leadership. 

“We needed a dose of humility around our place and Sark saw that from the beginning,” Gideon said. “He’s so consistent day-to-day that there is no grey area for our standard. We have a team now that reflects the toughness and steadiness that’s required at the top of this sport.” 

And if anyone understands toughness, it’s a Gideon.