Okay, so I was digging around the internet today, trying to find some interesting connections between football coaches and their families, and I stumbled upon this Mike McCarthy and J.J. McCarthy thing. It’s a bit of a rabbit hole, but here’s what I found, and how I went about checking it all out.
My Little Investigation
First, I just Googled “Mike McCarthy son” to see what would pop up. You know, the basic, lazy search. Mostly, I got results about Mike McCarthy, the Dallas Cowboys coach. Obviously. I knew he had a family, but my mind went straight to whether or not they have any real connection with each other.
Then I added “J.J. McCarthy” to the search. Boom! Now I was seeing articles about the Michigan quarterback, J.J. McCarthy. Some of those articles were talking about his dad, Jim, I think. And a lot of the chatter was about whether there’s any relation between J.J. and the Cowboys coach.
So, I started clicking through some of these articles. I am looking for reliable sources, you know, not just random fan blogs. I checked out some sports news sites, maybe ESPN and a few others. Some of those results had family bios and stuff. I looked specifically for mentions of Mike McCarthy’s children and J.J. McCarthy’s parents.
I also looked up both of their Wikipedia pages. Wikipedia is a great place to start. I scrolled through the “Personal life” or “Early life” sections on both pages. Those are goldmines for family info. I mean, seriously, nothing on either page connected the two families.
To be double-sure, I even tried a search on a couple of those genealogy websites. They’re usually pretty good at tracking family trees. It is difficult to find some connection between both of them.
The “Conclusion”
After all this digging, flipping between browser tabs, and reading way too many articles, I’m pretty confident in saying that Mike McCarthy, the Cowboys coach, and J.J. McCarthy, the Michigan QB, are not father and son. Their family backgrounds just don’t match up. No evidence. Zero. Zilch. I checked everywhere, so it’s just a coincidence that they share a last name.
It was a fun little research project, though! Reminds me that you can’t believe everything you see online, and it’s always good to do your own checking, from different angles.
