As a player, Thomas McGaughey Jr. could never quite crack an NFL active roster.

He spent time in training camp and on the practice squad with the Cincinnati Bengals and Philadelphia Eagles in the mid-1990s before returning to his alma mater, the University of Houston, in 1998 as a graduate assistant.

But thanks to a program started by the late Bill Walsh and the San Francisco 49ers, McGaughey got a second chance in the NFL in 2001, this time as a coach.

McGaughey secured a Bill Walsh NFL Minority Coaching Fellowship with the Kansas City Chiefs and ran with the opportunity. The program, which all 32 teams participate in, is designed to increase the number of full-time NFL minority coaches by allowing fellows to gain valuable experience throughout training camp.

Fourteen years later, the 49ers officially announced the hiring of McGaughey on Monday as the team's special teams coordinator.

To learn more about McGaughey and his path to San Francisco, we dug up four more interesting facts.