How Joe Critchlow’s (MBA ’26) college football experience brought him to Cambridge.
Even amidst the chaos of START week, Joe Critchlow was hard to miss among the 2026 RC class. He looks the part of a Division I quarterback – at 6’4” with bright red hair, he stands out in any crowd. And while his natural athletic ability helped him contribute to victorious performances in tug-of-war and bucketball during the Section Olympics, it’s unlikely that his classmates in Section H fully appreciated his athletic pedigree or his one-of-a-kind journey to HBS.
Over the last 10 years, Critchlow’s path to campus led him through packed football stadiums in Tennessee and Utah, remote Québécois villages, and a yearlong stint in Hong Kong at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Along the way, he met and married his wife, Allie, and became the father to two sons, Brooks and Cal, all while pursuing a career in consulting at Bain & Co. He’s achieved more in his 27 years than many do in a lifetime, and much of that can be attributed to his first love – the game of football.
The son of a former college quarterback, Critchlow’s football life began in earnest at the age of eight in Franklin, Tennessee, just outside Nashville. He played several sports throughout his youth, but football – and the quarterback position – was his passion from the start. A natural leader, he always felt comfortable with the ball in his hand, and even as a young player gravitated to the more intellectual elements of the game, memorizing Pop Warner playbooks and analyzing film long before he was ever expected to do so. When asked about how he separated himself from others, even early in his career, he said that he “learned quickly that if you can be smart about how you play the game, you can give yourself a leg up.”
That leg up let him excel at Franklin High School, where he earned the Mid-State Mr. Football Award following his senior season. His success naturally led to attention from college coaches throughout the Southeast, and he first envisioned continuing his career close to home at Vanderbilt, where he had begun to build a strong relationship with the coaching staff. His desire to balance academics with the allure of playing in the SEC seemed to dovetail well with what the Commodores had to offer, and the thought of staying in his home city was appealing. However, things weren’t that simple.
Like so many devout members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), Joe grew up committed to the idea of serving an LDS mission prior to attending college. And while it’s not uncommon for programs in the West to accommodate recruits’ desires to pursue religious service, the concept of taking two years away from school and football is generally foreign in largely Protestant, football-crazed SEC country. With many college football coaches unwilling to wait two years for him to join their respective rosters, Critchlow was forced to look elsewhere. As a young Mormon, he’d grown up idolizing BYU (Brigham Young University) quarterbacks: recent stars like John Beck and Taysom Hill, as well as legends like Steve Young and Jim McMahon. This personal and religious connection, along with the genuine commitment to academics that he found within the football program, made BYU a perfect fit.
Before taking the field in Provo, however, Critchlow was called to spend two years in Canada as a missionary for his church. Living in Quebec, he had three primary objectives: support the regional LDS community, serve the local area philanthropically, and grow the faith in an unfamiliar territory. Needless to say, he didn’t have much free time – and even when he had a spare moment or two, the lack of adequate facilities made training in the way to which he was accustomed virtually impossible. So, to keep his skills fresh, he became a missionary for the game of football, recruiting locals unfamiliar with the sport to run routes and catch passes as he tried to stay sharp during his time away.
Despite his best efforts, reintegrating into big-time college football was always going to be a challenge after two years away. Even at BYU, it’s extremely uncommon for returning missionaries to see the field soon after their return – the first two years of a collegiate athlete’s career are generally focused on training and development, and while he was serving in Quebec, his former classmates had been lifting weights and studying playbooks. At least as far as his first year was concerned, Critchlow was behind the curve, and few around Provo expected much from him in the fall of 2017.
Nevertheless, he immediately took to Offensive Coordinator Ty Detmer’s pro-style offense and made his debut against Boise State in early October, just four months after arriving on campus. As injuries sidelined starting quarterback Tanner Mangum and second-stringer Beau Hoge, depleting the BYU quarterback room, he gained experience in the weeks that followed and was elevated to starting quarterback for the final three games of the season. After starting the season 2-8, the unheralded freshman rallied the locker room for the final stretch, and they won two of their last three games under Critchlow’s command. It’s tough for any freshman to enter a situation like that and find success, much less one who had taken two full years away from the sport. Despite the Cougars’ poor record, Critchlow’s on-field performance and willingness to lead by example in earning the trust of his teammates signaled promise for the seasons to follow.
Unfortunately, the combination of the losing season and the high-dollar, win-now nature of college football led to changes on the BYU coaching staff. Detmer was fired after the season and replaced by Jeff Grimes, whose wide-open, run-and-gun offensive philosophy differed significantly from Detmer’s more traditional pro-style attack. Unfortunately, as an old-school, drop-back pocket passer, Critchlow’s game didn’t translate as well to the new system. This change, paired with the addition of freshman quarterback Zach Wilson – who would go on to be the 2nd overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft – led to a significant decrease in Critchlow’s playing time in 2018 and 2019. With his degree in hand after just three years, he decided to enter the transfer portal, and quickly received attention from North Carolina State, Tennessee, and other schools in the market for experienced quarterbacks.
Destiny had other plans, however, and doubt surrounding the viability of the 2020 college football season led to a nearly complete halt on transfers that Spring. At a personal, athletic, and professional crossroads, Critchlow decided to hang up the cleats earlier than he ever expected and begin his career in the business world. As a married man facing an uncertain football future, he leveraged a personal connection to find a role with a Hong Kong-based manufacturing company. On short notice, he and his wife headed to East Asia, surviving quarantine and immersing themselves in the culture before Bain called about an off-cycle interview opportunity. Sensing a similar team environment to the one he’d so relished as an athlete, he’d long had an interest in pursuing a career in consulting. And while he’d enjoyed his experience abroad, he and his wife hoped to move closer to family as they started a family of their own. So, navigating yet another short timeline, he interviewed well enough to earn an offer in Bain’s Boston office, and he and his wife returned to the United States just in time for the birth of their first child.
The couple have lived in Boston – his wife’s hometown – ever since, and recently moved into SFP with their two boys. And while he isn’t as close to the sport as he once was, Critchlow keeps up with many of his former teammates and attributes much of what he’s achieved to his experience as a football player. Confident that “anyone that plays football is uniquely qualified to perform in a team setting,” he felt that the traits he developed as an athlete – delaying gratification, prioritizing preparation, and unifying diverse teams in pursuit of common goals – translates well not only to consulting, but to the classroom setting at HBS. He recalls tumultuous times in his athletic career and realizes that the lessons he learned in persistence, diligence, and navigating uncertainty ultimately facilitated the successes he’s achieved throughout his life. So, if you see him around and are curious about a Division I quarterback’s experience at HBS, don’t hesitate to ask – after all, he’s tough to miss.
John Mahoney (MBA ’26) is a native of West Des Moines, Iowa. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2021 with a degree in Finance. While in college, he was a walk-on defensive back for the Fighting Irish and wrote a book about his experience, titled “History Through The Headsets.” Prior to coming to HBS, John worked in consulting and strategy in Minneapolis and Chicago.
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