Trinity Catholic high school football coach John Brantley was a star quarterback in high school and went on to play college football for Steve Spurrier at the University of Florida. But Brantley’s path to coaching high school football didn’t follow the normal blueprint. No, he began coaching football from the back of a tailgate at the age of 42.
“I took my son to football practice when he was about 10 or 12 years old,” Brantley remembers. “I was not involved in football in any way, other than being a parent of a young son who wanted to play.
“I was sitting on the tailgate of my truck watching practice, and I guess I was shaking my head and showing my displeasure with the way practice was being run, and about that time, my son’s coach stopped practice, and came walking over to where I was sitting, and told me to either leave right now, or get out here and coach, so I became his offensive coordinator on the spot,” Brantley recalls with a chuckle.
Brantley was 42, making his coaching debut in the Marion County Youth Football League, and it was quite the success. With his son, Johnny, at quarterback, Brantley said he took the “Fun-N-Gun” that he had played in and learned under Spurrier and taught it to his new team.
“We had 10-year old kids throwing the ball around all over the place and we were just wide open,” Brantley remembers.
They won, too.
“We won a junior Super Bowl that first year and won a total of two in four seasons with the team,” he says.
Brantley won with the lessons he learned from Spurrier at Florida. The Celtics head coach says that same Gators influence is still producing wins at Trinity Catholic High School’s football program today.
“Kerwin Bell, another former Gator quarterback, asked me to come coach with him at Trinity Catholic,” Brantley recalls. “Bell had spent time with Spurrier and played under Lindy Infante [former UF player and NFL/USFL head coach], so there was a lot of Florida Gators influence there at Trinity.”
Bell was the first head coach at Trinity Catholic. Brantley spent four seasons under him as the running backs coach before taking over as head coach. He has served as the Trinity Catholic head coach in two separate spans, first from 2008-2014, then again for the past three seasons, since returning in 2020.
Brantley’s son, Johnny, followed his dad from the youth league to Trinity Catholic, where the younger Brantley played quarterback and led the Celtics to a state title in 2005, while his dad was an assistant. Johnny would go on to play quarterback at Florida, following in the footsteps of his father.
John Brantley led his team to the state championship game last year, where they came up short against First Baptist Academy in the Florida Class 1S state title game.
Brantley says he is excited to see what his team can do in 2023. The schedule includes a trip to St. Xavier in Cincinnati in Week 9.
“I want to expose our guys to teams outside of Ocala,” the head coach says.
