Khari Gee had to take a step back so he could take a step forward.
Now a junior safety for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, he was a four-star prospect in the class of 2021 coming out of Georgia’s Woodward Academy and started his college football career in the top-tier Football Bowl Subdivision.
Since then, the 6-foot-2, 199-pound Atlanta native has had plenty of time to learn that college in general — even beyond the football aspect for a student-athlete like him — is a journey of perseverance.
He lived it at Notre Dame, where he spent the 2021 season with the sport’s most powerful independent program, as well as at Atlantic Coast Conference member Georgia Tech, where he transferred after not playing for the Fighting Irish. He appeared in all 12 games (with two starts) for the Yellow Jackets as a redshirt freshman in 2022 but eventually fell out of the rotation in the secondary, with Gee saying he was told his body “wasn’t the type that they wanted” at the position.
After playing in just one game in 2023, he took last season off with the intention of graduating with a degree in business and allowing more runway to focus on football.