Then-Klein Oak High School head football coach David Smith was visiting Doerre Intermediate School in Klein, Texas, when a “little bitty redheaded guy” made his first impression on the coach.
“We always meet with those guys in the spring — the guys who are going to come and see us next season — at the junior high,” said Smith, who served as an assistant coach at OU under Gary Gibbs and as a graduate assistant with Barry Switzer. “(He) was on the front row, with a big ol' smile. He was just fired up, you could tell. And we said, ‘Hey, we're going no backs, no huddles … signal everything.’ And he just stood up and yelled, he was so excited.
“We said, ‘Who is this guy?’”
That guy was Conner McQueen, who would eventually wear many hats down the line of his football career — from Texas A&M, to UCLA and finally as an offensive analyst for the Sooners. He went from backup quarterback to a starter in high school, walked on at Texas A&M to become a reserve quarterback, cemented himself as an Aggie icon despite only taking a few snaps as a QB, and finally worked under Kevin Sumlin and Chip Kelly.
Now, he’s working as an offensive analyst for OU head coach Lincoln Riley.
“At A&M, it went well for him, then UCLA came up and you know, what the heck, Kelly is a great offensive mind,” Smith said. “And (he's) in California, that’s great for him. But he wanted to do more. He (wasn't) in Oklahoma.”
'He always acted like he wanted to coach'
Conner’s been around football his entire life.
His grandfather, Bob McQueen, is a Texas high school football legend. He played at the University of Tulsa and went on to win district titles, state championships and other honors throughout his high school coaching career at Mexia High School and Temple High School.
Conner’s father played quarterback for his grandfather, and eventually played quarterback at Texas A&M in the early '80s.
“I mean, I went to my first Texas A&M game when I was like six weeks old or something,” said Conner. “I grew up kind of in that environment and everything, started playing football at a young age too. It was something that I just really always loved and enjoyed.”
Although a younger coach, he’s been getting experience his whole life — whether it was watching games with his father, taking notes and drawing up plays in his living room while in elementary school, or doing film studies with his coaches when he was in fifth grade. He just couldn’t get enough of it.
In high school, he played slot receiver to get on the field, and was backup quarterback to Nicky Baratti — who was about four inches taller, and had more talent and range, Smith said. Baratti went on to play safety for Notre Dame, and the two remain close friends.
“He was a lot bigger than I was — I’m, you know, not the biggest guy,” said Conner, who stood at 5-foot-10 and about 175 pounds as a college senior, according to his Texas A&M bio. “The second game of (our senior) season (Baratti) got a concussion, I was his backup ... so I went in and in my first pass after I went filling in for him, I threw a touchdown and we kind of got things rolling from there.”
Baratti got better two weeks later, but Conner said Baratti was one teammate who went to the coaching staff urging them to keep Conner in at quarterback. Conner said Baratti told the coaches he was willing to make a position change to do whatever was best for the team.
“(I said,) 'Nicky, you can play fullback, quarterback, safety, linebacker, receiver — you can do all those things, and McQueen can do one thing pretty good. And that's quarterback,'” Smith said. “Slot receiver, he's OK. But as quarterback, he gave everyone else a chance to really show their skills, get the ball in the right places. … We got beat by Skyline in the regional finals, and it was a heartbreaker, we were good.
“He always acted like he wanted to coach. He always just loved it, the X's and O’s.”
‘He was always that positive guy’
Conner’s teammates have seen his dedication develop into technique firsthand. Jake Hubenak, a Texas A&M quarterback from 2015–17, first arrived in the quarterback room in late summer, 2015, after transferring from Blinn Junior College. Trevor Knight would also join the QB room after his post-graduate transfer from OU in 2016.
Although technically competing against one another, both Hubenak and Knight said Conner was one of their biggest allies in helping them adjust to the A&M offense.
“I obviously wanted to play quite a bit, and as a competitor you really want to, but I think I did a good enough job of just understanding what my role was on the team, and I had some really good conversations with a lot of our coaching staff as well,” Conner said. “They were really transparent with me, you know realistically, every quarterback that they were going to bring in was going to be more talented than me.
“It was my job to prepare as if I was going to play, in case there were injuries or anything like that. ... I just saw my role as something completely different than that, and I felt like I would just be a waste of energy and of waste of space, and it would only be detrimental to the team if I was just unhappy with my role and I wasn't supportive of the other guys. … I think that was why I really always pushed to be completely supportive of everybody else, just because football is such a team game that I just never wanted to be that weak link in the chain.”
In his time at A&M, Conner played with many other talented quarterbacks. From redshirting in 2012 and seeing Heisman-winner Johnny Manziel in his first two years, to Kenny Hill in 2014, to Kyler Murray and Kyle Allen in 2015, he worked with lots of offensive stars. He and Hubenak formed a special bond as two of the older members in the QB room from 2015 onward, and Hubenak has moved to the coaching realm himself at Hutto High School near Austin, Texas.
“Both of us being older than those guys, kind of helping them through their first couple years playing and stuff like that — I think we could both kind of tell that we both wanted to be coaches,” Hubenak said. “Just by the way that we naturally enjoyed teaching people the game of football and helping them learn and really analyzing it, and that's kind of something that we would do together a lot.”
Knight said coming in as a graduate transfer, it can go one way or the other, but Conner and Hubenak accepted him with open arms — the two were even in his wedding over the summer.
“Jake and Conner both, those were the two guys that essentially, I was coming in to compete against in the quarterback room. ... We had a great time; the dynamic of us three in that QB room was so positive, was so enjoyable and is lifelong,” Knight said. “Conner, just always being there, regardless of if he was going to be on the field or not. Helping in any way that he could, watching extra film to make my life easier, always providing a pick-me-up when things are going down.
“He was always that positive guy, that positive influence that kind of permeated through the rest of our QB room and the rest of the team.”
Even as a reserve quarterback, Conner developed a cult-following of Texas A&M fans and the moniker ‘Lightning McQueen.’ Jerry Neuheisel, a graduate assistant at UCLA who previously served as a graduate assistant at Texas A&M in 2017, said Conner didn’t get the nickname because he was fast — “He's not very fast at all,” Neuheisel said — it was just because he has red hair.
“Even as a true freshman, when he first got there as a walk on and not many people knew who he was, I mean, he grabbed the attention of people like Johnny Manziel,” Hubenak said. “That's just the kind of kid he is. He's not gonna shy away from being in the spotlight and he really enjoys being that energy guy, which is super impressive. You go through two-a-days, fall camp, spring football, summer workouts … it kind of weighs on people. And he's an energy guy every single day.”
While at A&M, Conner served as a holder in addition to being a reserve quarterback. He walked on there in 2012, bypassing offers from smaller schools to fulfill his “dream come true” of playing for the Aggies. Prior to his 2014 season, former Texas A&M head coach Kevin Sumlin put him on scholarship.
He learned of the scholarship in a team meeting, after a practice where he forgot to complete his weigh-in, and Sumlin called out a couple of names to go see the Director of Football Operations.
“My heart immediately sunk because I thought that I was in trouble for missing weigh-in,” Conner said. “And (Sumlin) goes, ‘Because you guys are now on full-ride scholarship.’ I think the biggest thing for me is just the reaction from all of our teammates, congratulating us and everything and my roommates, my best friends, everything. It brought me and a handful of my teammates to tears. It was a moment that I will cherish for the rest of my life.”
After Manziel left in 2014, Conner said he went from being like “Johnny's little younger brother, to being the oldest guy in the quarterback room.” At the time, they had younger QB coach: Jake Spavital, who is now at Texas State, so Conner transitioned to being the “big brother” and mentor to the younger quarterbacks.
Although he didn’t get much playing time as a QB at A&M, with a career 100% completion rate of one pass for 1 yard, a 9-yard rush and one rush for a lost yard, he did see the field in 43 total games with his time as a holder. Conner even competed for the Mortell “Holder of The Year” award in 2016, with a hype video of his highlights going viral among the Aggie fanbase, although he did not win.
“Pretty much the whole team was pretty locked in, making sure we could do whatever we could to promote him and just for all that he's done for everybody else, we really thought he deserved it,” Hubenak said. “We thought he kind of got hosed for not getting it. … People really don't understand how hard it really is. It takes a lot of pressure because literally there's no glory that goes into that job. But the second somebody messes up a hold, it’s, you know, the world’s burning down.”
‘Soak it up like a sponge’
Conner got his undergraduate degree in accounting, and then went on to get his masters in financial management. He had a full-time job offer at a large accounting firm toward the end of his senior season, but his heart wasn’t in it.
His next stop was talking with Sumlin, who told him he should be a student assistant while finishing up his master's in the spring.
“I just wasn't really excited for what my next chapter was going to be, and I knew that I had always wanted to coach in some capacity, so I went to Coach Sumlin,” Conner said. “At the end of that semester … I put together a list of some schools that I thought I might have a chance to work for that I had talked to, and asked if he'd be willing to recommend me to some of those guys and some of those different schools. He said, ‘Conner, with all due respect, we're creating a position for you here. We don't want you to leave.’
“That was a pretty easy yes.”
Hubenak said Conner’s transition to becoming a graduate assistant came easy to him, and that he thinks coaching came naturally as well.
“Even in high school, I told him from the beginning, ‘If you finish college and still want to coach, you stay and get your master's, no matter what,’” Smith said. “‘The networking is so huge for your job opportunities. So you stay, get a master's degree, (be a graduate assistant) even if they don’t pay you anything, or be a student coach. Just soak it up like a sponge.’ That's where you get your networking. That's where people get to know you. And then you follow the trails or people that you want to follow.”
In Conner’s last semester, he only enrolled in one class, so he was able to take his student assistant role “really seriously,” being at work 10–14 hours a day since he had the time to. He was hired as an offensive analyst the next year.
“I always knew there was so much that went on behind the scenes that none of the players ever got to see, and I always wanted to know what all that was, but you never really get to see all that until you're really immersed in it,” Conner said. “So I thought that was really cool to see truly how much hard work goes into each and every single day that the coaches are going to be around the players, and how intentional every single thing is.”
Conner met UCLA head coach Chip Kelly when he came to visit A&M for a week while working at ESPN, and the former Oregon Ducks, Philadelphia Eagles and San Francisco 49ers coach remembered Conner after the season and offered him a job. While talking about Conner’s career aspirations, Kelly told Conner that one of the best things he did as a play-caller was coaching defense — starting his career coaching defense, learning and understanding more of how it works on that side of the ball.
“He thought it'd be really really beneficial for me to (start coaching defense) as well, and I had never played or coached defense in my life,” Conner said. “So I know for that first probably six to nine months, I just felt like I was doggy paddling or just trying to stay afloat. But I thought, ‘Chip Kelly's telling me that this is going to be a good idea for me.’ I thought that would be a pretty good idea for me. So I'm really thankful for that advice.
“I still say I learned more about defense in my first six months at UCLA from Coach Kelly and from Coach Jerry Azzinaro than I had learned in my whole life combined leading up to that. So, it was a whole different animal in terms of learning everything.”
Neuheisel and Conner became fast friends when they were both on the coaching staff at A&M. Neuheisel had played a few seasons at UCLA as a quarterback and finished off his last season in Japan, then served as a graduate assistant for former A&M offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone and Sumlin.
When Neuheisel arrived at UCLA as a graduate assistant after a year at A&M, Kelly asked him if he’d have any other people he’d recommend for the coaching staff, and Conner was his first choice.
“(Conner) joined and then got in the car, and I think within a week he had got in the car, drove the 23 straight hours and was not going home until he had the job here,” Neuheisel said. “I think at first, it was a little bit hard for him, because … he's a quarterback. So you always want to be on offense … but I think in the end, he realized the value in it, because you can't be a really, really great football coach until you understand both sides.”
Smith visited former OU head coach Barry Switzer during a trip to Norman last year — his first visit in 22 years. He said they chatted in his office with Riley, but he didn’t even have to mention or recommend Conner.
Through Knight, Conner became friends with current OU offensive assistant Ty Darlington, who was Knight’s center at OU and one of his closest friends. The two stayed in touch, and occasionally brought up the prospect of Conner joining the OU staff. When the analyst job at OU opened up, Conner said Riley remembered his name from when Knight had mentioned him a while back.
“When he was moving out (to UCLA), I told Coach Riley and said, ‘Hey, take a look at this guy.’ At the time, it wasn't a good fit or a good opportunity,” Knight said. “I think Conner enjoyed his time out on the west coast a lot, because he wears skinny jeans and converse everywhere he goes now, but eventually it made sense for him to have a conversation with Coach Riley, and now he's on staff.
“He's gonna make them a whole lot better, and he did the day he walked through the door.”
‘One of those guys who could fit in anywhere’
All of Conner’s experiences have led him to the Palace on The Prairie. In an odd time for football with the COVID-19 pandemic, he said he’s enjoyed it so far just the same, getting to OU four days prior to the university shutdown in the spring.
“Obviously, this year with things going on, he's not gonna get the full experience, unfortunately. But West Coast football is just a little different, from a fanship standpoint, it's a high caliber of football, yes,” Knight said. “But you're not going to have the passion, the energy, the focus that you are in Oklahoma Memorial Stadium or at Kyle Field or places like that. ... I think he's gonna take it and run with it. He feeds off of that type of energy.”
In his first 36 hours on campus, Conner said he had “genuine interaction and conversation” with everyone on the staff, and he said everyone made attempts to get to know him beyond just introducing themselves.
“I've absolutely loved it,” Conner said. “You can see the family environment that the staff has, I think that's been the biggest thing for me. I mean, even if I’ve been working for probably four or five months (remotely) — we all did — and just feeling that being on Zoom and just seeing everybody interact together, and how all the other coaches interact with each other. Kind of the ebbs and the flows of the coaching staff has been really cool to see.”
Neuheisel is confident that Conner’s move to OU was a “perfect situation for him” following the experience he’s gained from working under Kelly.
“You've been under Coach Kelly for a couple years, you understand his system, OK perfect. Well, let me take that experience, and now see how I can apply that to Coach Riley’s system,” Neuheisel said. “‘What can I learn from Coach Riley, what can I take from him? And what can I add to the staff from my experience?’ I think he was excited because he was looking for a new learning experience, and he was looking for a new opportunity and something to get back closer home to Texas.
“He'll fit right in, he'll be exactly what they need. I have no doubt about it. One thing is, some guys have certain fits. He's one of those guys who could fit in anywhere just because he's so genuine and brings energy every single day. So I know they'll love him, and he'll love being there.”
Even outside of the Texas A&M QB room, Hubenak still looks to Conner as a mentor in coaching.
“He's just somebody I always reach out to,” Hubenak said. “Especially with him being at Oklahoma and learning from Coach Riley, and learning from a lot of those guys, I just always want to pick his brain and ... know where he's at. We kinda always joke around, but at the same time, we're serious that, at some point, hopefully, we can connect and coach together. I told him all the time that I'm just waiting to become a head coach so that he can hire me as his offensive coordinator.”
All the intellect he’s collected over his football career is coming to fruition now as a coach, Knight said, and he expects Conner to be the guy to stay late, watch extra film, and continue to be coachable even as a coach so he can be better for the team.
“He's just continued to be a sponge,” Knight said. “He's just applying the things that he was so good at as a player, and now he's turning that into coaching side. From a relatability standpoint, he’s still a young guy, he just went through the fire of being a player … he can talk to them on a level that they understand.
“There's no doubt in my mind that if you haven't heard the name Conner McQueen yet, that you're going to get to know it. And then at some point, everybody in the country is going to know it, because he's a rising star.”
