CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — As a 6-year-old learning to squat in a three-point stance, Brycen Sanders was barely into his football journey when his dad plotted out a course that sealed off detours and squashed a few daydreams.

“You’re not going to play quarterback. You’re not going to play wide receiver. Not going to be a free safety. You’re going to be an offensive lineman, so don’t even think about any other position on the field.”

For all the dads who seem like outsized figures to their kids, Sanders’ father Gary is legit stout at 6-foot-5. The former lineman at Middle Tennessee State was coaching high school ball when Brycen was born, and the kid grew up watching his dad command locker rooms. When the man spoke, the message penetrated.

Soon, tagging along to practices and games wasn’t enough, so Brycen wanted to sit in on film study. His dad’s primary condition?

“Don’t watch the ball. Watch the linemen.”

Gary wasn’t sure how much of the fundamentals young Brycen actually comprehended back then, but one fact was verifiable: When the game video turned on, the boy was watching. Intently. That scene — father and son pausing and rewinding play after play of double-teams, reach blocks, slide steps — has been replicated across a decade, yielding the current 18-year-old version of Brycen Sanders, a 6-foot-6 and 290-pound product of nature and nurture. A four-star, top-300 recruit in the 2023 class.

“It’s like he was born to do this,” Gary said.

During a recent spring practice at the Baylor School’s private 700-acre campus, Oklahoma offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby and offensive line coach Bill Bedenbaugh flew in to reiterate their interest. LSU continues to make a push. Ole Miss, where Brycen’s grandfather played in the early 1970s, has been in contention ever since extending Brycen’s first offer in December 2020. Tennessee, just 90 minutes away, has proximity on its side along with another connection: O-line coach Glen Elarbee was a college teammate of Gary’s.

Aside from Brycen’s four finalists, other schools continue pressing. Kirby Smart and several Georgia assistants recently mailed hand-written notes in hopes of reigniting interest. Stanford was primed to be his fifth official visit, before he ultimately opted against going. Among his 26 offers, nine are from SEC programs.

If there’s a bittersweet tinge to being a blue-chip recruit courted by a host of blue blood schools, it’s the fact that Alabama, the team Brycen grew up idolizing, is among the holdouts. His family frequently has traveled to Crimson Tide games and their dog, a German shorthaired pointer, is named Bama. But when your dream school is reluctant to offer, you recalibrate your dream.

He’s an offensive lineman, always has been, and some other school is going to land a formidable player when he commits June 23.

The rewards of being a coach’s kid are conjoined with demands and expectations. Gary has been Brycen’s position coach since middle school — leading to moments where it’s difficult to know whether to hug or harangue.

“He knows I’ll jump his ass in a heartbeat,” Gary said. “And that’s the hard part: You want to love on him, but I’m treating him equally as every other player out there. He’s going to get coached up like everybody else.”

At home, it can mean getting coached up even harder.

Immediately after Friday night games, the television in the Sanders’ living room becomes a teaching tool as Gary connects his laptop and digs into a blunt evaluation. “He yells at me the whole time, basically,” joked Brycen, who acknowledges it’s beneficial to rewatch his performance while it’s fresh even though “sometimes I just want to go to bed.”

What’s playing out in the family den is akin to what would Brycen would hear in a college position meeting. Effort must be relentless. Errors must be resolved. Excuses aren’t relevant.

“That’s the way our dad raised us,” said Brycen’s older sister Hannah, a former all-state softball pitcher and standout basketball player in high school. “Actually, Dad is not nearly as hard on Brycen as he was on me. It’s not even close.”

She recalled some unpleasant car rides after games in which she played poorly, and reminisces about a comical video from when she was learning to crawl and Gary yelled for her to start walking. You could hear their mom, Ally, telling him, “Gary, she literally CAN’T walk yet!”

Hannah credits the tough-minded upbringing for helping her navigate a severe knee injury that limited her shot at a major-college softball scholarship. Instead, she graduated from Coastal Carolina in three years with a degree in intelligence and national security. Now she’s headed to Kyrgyztan for summer study, working to become fluent in Russian, and planning to enroll at Penn State to pursue a master’s in international affairs — a track that could make her a blue-chip recruit for an embassy position.

She recognizes the same high-achiever gene in Brycen. Despite recently qualifying for the Tennessee state track & field championships in the shot put and discus, he was dejected about failing to approach his personal record.

During her time at Coastal, Hannah became nostalgic for the family time constructed around travel ball, tournaments and state playoffs. She and Brycen thrived on the hyper-competitive spirit, keeping tabs on who hit more home runs all the way back to when he was launching bombs at the 7-year-old Dizzy Dean World Series.

“We’ve always been each other’s biggest fans,” she said. “And we’ve always pushed each other.”

Especially when their dad’s work as a commercial insurance broker meant he wasn’t around to oversee training sessions. He left scripted workouts for them to complete in their garage gym, and “if one of use saw that the other one wasn’t putting enough plates on the bar, we would check each other,” Hannah said.

After the workout, came a silly sibling celebration: They’d crank up music and dance around the garage. “There was a time when the Whip and Nae Nae was our song, and Brycen would really get into it,” she said.

They were so connected, their victories and setbacks shared equally. Like Hannah’s senior year basketball game, when she ran to the bathroom during a timeout. Her mom met her in the bathroom, crying, because Brycen had suffered a broken leg in his eighth-grade wrestling match. Hannah started bawling, too, and played the rest of the game with red, swollen eyes. She scored a career high, and at the final buzzer, rushed right to the hospital to see her brother.

The injury interrupted Brycen’s wrestling career — for a couple of years at least. When Baylor had a hole in its heavyweight class last winter, he returned to the mat, kept his weight below 285 and helped the team win a state championship.

Back to 6-year-old Brycen, for a moment. And another scary moment, in fact, when Gary was coaching at Gallatin High northeast of Nashville. As a play spilled toward the sideline, the ball boy was caught in the line of fire and pinned against the stadium wall.

“Brycen got absolutely clobbered — and I was really afraid,” Gary recalled. “But then he got right up, just like it was nothing.”

If there’s something innate about enjoying the physicality of football, Brycen’s DNA might reveal it. For all the technical talks involving footwork and hand placement, sometimes the thing Gary appreciates most is a mauler’s mindset.

“He’s so quiet and not really social off the field, so I love to hear from the other kids about Brycen becoming such a huge trash-talker on the field,” Gary said. “He has developed that nasty streak internally, to be that egotistic maniac that loves to crush people. He’s gotten that swagger over the years and gotten that mindset that ‘I’m going to line up across from you and beat you down.’ He loves to finish people.”

He’s motivated to finish his high school football career in similar fashion. Though Baylor has produced 266 state championship teams, the most of any Tennessee athletic program, it’s a legacy built on dynasties in swimming, tennis, golf, soccer, cross country, softball and fencing. Only one of those titles belongs to football. It occurred back in 1973.

This fall could afford an opportunity at another, and Brycen is locked in. The team has offseason lifting sessions at 6:30 a.m each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and he doesn’t require a wake-up nudge from his dad. He rises on his own arm, makes his own breakfast and is out the door before the rest of the house gets stirring.

“He’s ready to go,” Gary said. “It’s that important to him.”

Brycen played guard as a high school sophomore and moved out to tackle last season. With college coaches valuing him on the interior, he’ll shift to center as a senior. He possesses the height and athleticism for tackle — his 5-10-5 shuttle times and broad jumps were among the best at lineman camps — but lacks the prototypical NFL arm length.

His plans of enrolling next January hinge upon the Baylor School administration allowing him to graduate mid-year. Getting a jump-start on playing time is important next spring, as is starting his college classwork. Brycen’s aim: Earn a finance or economics degree within three years and start his master’s before his eligibility is finished.

He’s captivated by investing — when he’s not taking football, the topic shifts to stocks and crypto. Before 9 a.m. on the morning he turned 18, he opened his own Robinhood brokerage account with $150. Upon coaxing Hannah into opening her own account, Brycen earned his first referral bonus.

With that in mind, let’s take stock of where his final four schools stand a month before his commitment date:

Ole Miss: The Rebels staff spotted Brycen at a Nashville camp during his sophomore year and became the first school to offer. They’ve remained engaged through a change in offensive line coaches and Lebby leaving for Oklahoma. On the heels of Lane Kiffin going 10-3 in his second season, Ole Miss has started a $45 million face lift on the Manning Center.

“People talk about coach Kiffin looking to jump ship to the next-best place,” Gary said, “but I think he’s built a really good niche at Ole Miss and he’ll be there for a while.”

The fact that Gary’s father spent a college season in Oxford 52 years years ago isn’t a factor. “He’ll cheer for me wherever I go,” Brycen said.

Tennessee: Last October’s spectacle of Vols fans delaying the Ole Miss game for 20 minutes with a barrage of water bottles, condiments and one golf ball that buzzed Kiffin? Brycen was at Neyland Stadium that night on an unofficial visit.

“Their fans are insane,” he told The Athletic, sounding rather positive about the experience. He and other recruits were seated in the lower-level end zone section, but no one was looking over their shoulders for flying debris. “Nah, they knew where the recruits were,” he said.

More impressive is how first-year coach Josh Heupel rode a decimated roster to a 7-6 finish with an up-tempo attack. “Their offense is one of the best in the country,” Brycen said.

The Elarbee link is fascinating. “Glenn tutored me in math at MTSU,” Gary said. “He’s a genius and just a great human being. And he has been with Heupel for years, so they bring some stability.”

LSU: Brycen visited Baton Rouge in March and came away impressed by the “super-real” communication style of offensive line coach Brad Davis, the only on-field assistant retained by Brian Kelly.

As for the former Notre Dame boss, hired by LSU for the price of $95 million over 10 years, Brycen likes “how he’s going to run things.”

Of course, there are other allures to the program, which is only three years removed from a national title. “The facilities at LSU are some of the best in the county,” Gary said. “And getting the opportunity to play at Tiger Stadium, it’s the most intimidating stadium in the SEC.”

Oklahoma: Brycen insists “there’s nothing like the passion of SEC football,” and the Sooners will fit right in whenever their conference switch officially transpires.

Bedenbaugh has directed the nation’s premier offensive lines during his nine years at Oklahoma, and Sanders was impressed that he chose to stay when Lincoln Riley offered a spot at USC.

During an unofficial visit in March, new head coach Brent Venables made a large impression also. He sat down with the Sanders for 90 minutes “and I think we only talked for five minutes of that,” Gary said. “He was so excited about that program and the future of it, I was electrified by him.”

Dad said OU checks so many boxes: “Beautiful campus, beautiful facilities, and their housing is better than anybody else’s. The only thing about Norman is that it’s just a long way from home.”

Brycen is slated to return to Oklahoma for his official visit June 3.

The nagging omission of Alabama is becoming fainter as the recruiting process winds down.

Offensive line coach Eric Wolford, who at one point had Brycen seriously considering Kentucky as a destination, joined Nick Saban’s staff in January. Wolford said there’s a chance for a Crimson Tide offer should Brycen excel at a Tuscaloosa camp this summer, but that doesn’t sound promising enough to reset his commitment timetable.

There’s a photo of a 9-year-old Brycen sporting a houndstooth hat at the 2014 SEC championship game. He’s hugging Hannah and their youngest sister, Avery, as confetti descends upon Crimson Tide players in the background. The boy in that image would’ve been crushed to hear Alabama didn’t want him. The man-sized lineman he has become realizes that recruiting, like stock valuations, is an imperfect science. Sometimes the best get it wrong.

“We know that he was upset early on, but he didn’t show that emotion or let it get to him because he still has these amazing offers,” said Hannah, striking a diplomatic tone. “He’s so dedicated in everything he does — practice, workouts, school — that he can get the same opportunities at these other schools that he would get at Bama.”

(Top photo: Courtesy of the Sanders family)