Bobby Ramsay has been in football his entire life. After his playing career ended in college, Ramsay wasn’t sure what his next move was going to be. However, it didn’t take Ramsay long to realize what he wanted to do.
In his home state of Texas, Ramsay knew to coach high school football you were required to teach. He quickly learned that wasn’t the case in Florida. After relocating to Florida, Ramsay started coaching at Lincoln High School in Tallahassee. From there, he moved onto First Coast High School in Jacksonville, before getting his first head coaching job at Yulee in 2008.
At Yulee, Ramsay got the opportunity to coach one of the greatest high school football players ever, Derrick Henry. Ramsay remembered helping Derrick decide where he would play college football, telling me “Winning has always mattered to Derrick, and it still does. So, I told him if you want to win Alabama is the spot for you.” Henry would go on to the University of Alabama and invited Ramsay to New York for the 2015 Heisman trophy celebration. Ramsay was in awe of being in the room with so many former Heisman winners and was overjoyed when his former running back took home the award. To this day, Ramsay and Henry are still close, Ramsay told me he still reaches out to Henry after ever game.
After going 64-36 in his 9 years at Yulee, Ramsay took over as the head football coach at Jacksonville’s Mandarin High School in 2017. Although Mandarin was a great job, the program needed work. In Ramsay’s first season his team went 2-8 and struggled just as much off the field as on it. But after receiving transfer quarterback Carson Beck, and getting his players to buy into his system, Ramsay led the Mustangs to the state championship in 2018.
Coming off the highs of a state championship, the Mustangs had a solid 2019 season, going 7-4, but lost in the first round of the playoffs. Going into 2020, the Mustangs have lost most of the key players from their state championship run and will look to the younger players to step up and lead the team into the future.
Over his time at Yulee and Mandarin, Ramsay is responsible for sending many of his players into college athletics. Derrick Henry, Carson Beck, and Demario Douglas all played under Ramsay, and have gone on to play Division I football at Alabama, Georgia, and Liberty respectively. Ramsay has also helped many of his players join Division II and III programs.
Ramsay was running a little late for our interview and apologized for it repeatedly, but I learned he was at a recruiting fair talking to college coaches trying to get scholarship offers for his players. I thought this showed what kind of coach Ramsay is on and off the field. On the field, a state champion, off the field, working overtime for the good of his players.