He says he didn't lie to the Gators about his past. "I filled out a form asking if I had any charges dealing with kids, and I didn't," he said. He did confide in some of the coaches and players, he says, that he had done time for other sorts of crimes.
For some kids, the bonds with McCown clearly went beyond coaching. A few years ago, he began throwing a football with the son of a family friend, Latarsha Johnson. The boy, Jacquan, now 11, kept asking his mother to let him spend time with McCown. Soon, McCown was helping Jacquan with his homework and roughhousing with him.
One day, Jacquan - "out of the blue," his mother said - asked McCown to be his godfather.
"Jacquan's father is around whenever he can be around," Johnson says. "Really, Aaron is more like a father to him than his father."
McCown's own mother, Sheila Word, was pleased by her son's involvement with kids, believing he was getting as much from them as they did from him.
He once told his mother that if he ever got married, he wanted to do it surrounded by his players - in their sweat suits. She hoped and believed the coaching would infuse him with a purpose that would help him avoid the mistakes - and bad influences - that dogged him.
It did not.
Hopkins dismissed him at the end of 2003 after he was jailed for reckless driving and driving with a suspended license in the middle of the night. By then, he had missed a number of days of work, according to Shannon, who had nominated him for the Martin Luther King award. Shannon said he is still puzzled as to why McCown couldn't stay straight.
Then came his heroin bust and probation in 2006.
"I know his record doesn't look good, but it doesn't look as bad as some other folks," his mother says. "My son isn't the type of person to kill anybody."
Through it all, McCown continued coaching the Gators.
Tough competition
Long before their Sept. 22 games, the Gators had developed a reputation for toughness. It was an image the coaches didn't mind. They wanted their kids to play hard and tolerated the occasional penalty resulting from overly aggressive tackles and blocks.
Before last season, the Gators had won so frequently that the league bumped them up to Division I, the most competitive class.
The change meant playing teams they were unfamiliar with, and White Oak - boasting several unbeaten squads - was considered the best. "They were all hyped to play us because we had never played before," said Wills, the White Oak director.
