Jerry Kill will be in Chicago late this week for the Big Ten’s annual media days. After 21 years in coaching, including four-plus at Minnesota, where does he rank compared with the other 13 head coaches in the Big Ten?
The opinion here is that’s an easy question. Urban Meyer has won national championships at Florida and Ohio State. Rank him No. 1 in the Big Ten, if not the country. Michigan State’s Mark Dantonio has taken a program that failed for decades and turned it into a national power. He deserves the No. 2 ranking. Jim Harbaugh, now at Michigan, pulled off miracles at Stanford, and then revived the NFL’s 49ers.
Give Kill the No. 4 spot among the Big Ten’s coaches. He has an overall record of 152-99 in five head coaching jobs including Minnesota. He has won championships and coach of the year awards. Peers admire his character and would send their sons to play for him.
And yet Kill will be the first to tell you there’s a lot more to accomplish. He enters his fifth Big Ten season with a below .500 record in conference games, 13-19. He wants to win a first West Division title and then a Big Ten championship. Then win some more.
Those trophies will further elevate Kill’s status among the nation’s better football coaches. Top 25 rankings of coaches right now are not likely to include Kill. That’s because there are many superb college head coaches, and most are at schools with more resources and potential to win than Minnesota, and those coaches have won more games on bigger stages than Kill who came to Minneapolis from Northern Illinois. The head coaching position here isn’t easy and Minnesota isn’t a sexy name to national authorities who rank the country’s best coaches and may start their lists with Meyer or Alabama’s Nick Saban, and end with Arkansas’s Bret Bielema or Arizona State’s Todd Graham.
The right head coach in the right place at the right time is a huge difference maker in college football. Hire the wrong guy and even Michigan—the winningest program in college football history—can struggle. Make a near perfect hire and the ugliest of programs like Baylor emerges as top 10 teams.
Get a guy who can put a staff together, recruit, coach X’s and O’s, motivate, raise money and charm the public, and all of a sudden the change at a losing program is more than cosmetic. That’s what Kill has done at Minnesota. His staff is not only good but has been together longer than just about any in recent major college football history. Kill and staff have identified and recruited talent that has played better than early evaluations predicted. Part of that success has come from the teaching of fundamentals and techniques, and then on gameday coming up with strategies to maximize success.
In 2013 and 2014 the Gophers had consecutive winning seasons for the first time since 2004-2005. Minnesota’s conference record was 5-3, the best since 2003. The Gophers had four players selected in last spring’s NFL Draft, the most since 2006. And the 1950 NFL Draft was the last time the Gophers had four players picked in the first five rounds.
But there’s more to the success story than those numbers. Kill has insisted players excel in classroom work, and not only behave away from the football field but contribute in the community. Kill took over a program in 2011 with academic problems and now has many players earning degrees. Instead of making news because of police reports, the Gophers are publicized for GPA’s and community work.
Kill has become the face of the athletic department. Big money donors want to help him for projects including his quest to build a new football complex. Without that facility, it’s unlikely the Gophers can keep him at Minnesota long-term.
Another step forward on the field in 2015 will be huge for Kill and the program. He and the team are popular but they still struggle for attention following decades of low beam awareness of Gophers football. The home opener against national championship contender TCU on September 3 isn’t even sold out. The Gophers public season ticket total has been tracking similar to last season when Minnesota didn’t sell out a single game in 52,525 seat capacity TCF Bank Stadium.
Kill, who has overcome cancer and controlled epilepsy, is a tireless promoter of the football program, the University and charitable causes. He wills himself through long days and keeps a schedule that few others could manage. Wherever he goes in the state people tell him how much they like him and his team. And yet many who applaud him at a banquet or a welcome luncheon don’t show up on Saturdays to watch the Gophers.
That’s not going to change until the Gophers win the Big Ten title or pack their bags for the Rose Bowl, or cement a place in the national rankings of the country’s best teams. Then more fans will make the Gophers a priority in their sports/entertainment budgets. Then many will leave their cozy spots in front of HD televisions to watch the Gophers on a cold and windy day late in the season when another Big Ten West Division title is an opportunity to be realized.
Kill knows there’s plenty of work yet to do including stopping that 11-game losing streak against the Badgers, and winning his first bowl game at Minnesota. Also, push his Big Ten record over .500 before too long, and some day win Minnesota’s first Big Ten championship since 1967.
Do all that and watch Kill’s name land on everybody’s national list of the country’s best coaches. Those who have had Kill ranked there all along will say, “Welcome to the bandwagon.”
Worth Noting
BTN and BTN2Go will air live coverage of the Big Ten Conference football coaches’ press conferences on Thursday and Friday. Kill’s press conference is scheduled for Friday when BTN coverage starts at 8 a.m. Minneapolis time. The Gophers’ first practice will be August 7.
Lindy’s National College Football Magazine offers its opinion on the nation’s 22 best head coaches and the publication includes four from the Big Ten. Urban Meyer from Ohio State is No. 2 after No. 1 ranked Nick Saban of Alabama. Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh is No. 5, Michigan State’s Mark Dantonio No. 6 and James Franklin of Penn State is No. 18. Kill didn’t make the list.
How much job pressure and turnover is there in Big Ten coaching? Kill is about to start his fifth season at Minnesota and among the league’s 13 other coaches only Dantonio, Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz and Northwestern’s Pat Fitzgerald have longer tenures at their schools. Indiana’s Kevin Wilson and Maryland’s Randy Edsall—like Kill—are entering fifth seasons as head coaches at their schools.
News tip: don’t be surprised if the Vikings and Minnesota State announce this week the NFL team will extend its agreement for three years to keep training camp in Mankato. This is the 50th consecutive year the Vikings have been on the school’s campus for preseason camps. Only the Packers, who have been at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin for 58 years, have held an NFL training camp at the same location longer.
Adam Thielen was an obscure college recruit coming out of Detroit Lakes and few Vikings fans thought much about him when he signed with the team as a free agent in 2013. But Thielen, who played college football at Minnesota State, made the 53-man roster last year as a wide receiver and special teams player. He has won the admiration of Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer. “I think Adam does a lot of great things and he’s a guy that cares an awful lot. It’s important to him.
“He’s a smart guy and I think he’s continued to improve. …It’s really a tribute to his hard work, his dedication and his determination.”
Zimmer was asked what he learned about training camp last year—his first as a head coach in the NFL. With his background as a defensive coordinator, Zimmer was initially more in tune with the defense. “I took notes last year on a lot of different scenarios and I wrote them in a book. I kind of tried to continue to do that. Honestly, I feel so much more comfortable (now) with the team, especially the offensive guys and the special teams guys. …
“The other thing that really helps is that basically we have the same coaching staff back for another year. So the meetings that we have as coaches are a little bit shorter, just because we already know (what) the practice schedule is going to be like. We might change something here and there, but we don’t have to sit there and discuss a lot of different things. We’re able to get it going and go from there. I feel more confident about the way we’re doing things.”