He is only 35 years old and in just under 50 games as a head coach he has compiled a record of 33-13 in his tenure with Toledo. Minnesota hired Kill away from NIU so why not go back to DeKalb, Illinois?
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After missing Tuesday’s news conference because of an appointment, Kill attended Tuesday night’s practice. “I want to coach the way I’ve coached my whole life”, Kill said during a half-hour news conference, his Kansas drawl quivering often and his wife fighting back tears nearby. “I don’t know. I ain’t done anything else”.
“Count on your health instead of your wealth and count on God instead of yourself”, Kill said. But the toll on his body, his mind and his family had become too big.
Kill told reporters he hasn’t slept for more than three hours in the past three weeks.
Kill was emotional at the press conference announcing his retirement, saying “I still want to coach”. With Minnesota now opening, it appears to be a particularly busy coaching search season in the Big Ten, meaning there will be a lot of competition for similar types of coaching candidates. He also had game-day seizures in 2001 and 2005 as the coach at Southern Illinois. “None of us would be here if it wasn’t for him”, Claeys said of Kill’s approach to the football program. “We’ve got a great recruiting class going on”.
Kill was inducted into the SIU Hall of Fame in 2014. Claeys also developed first-round National Football League draftees Larry English at Northern Illinois and Lamar King at Saginaw Valley State. Kill had done everything he could to eliminate the seizures, eliminating anything from his diet that could cause an episode, and dropping 13 pounds.
“You’re so sad, because there’s never going to be another day when you’re going to go out to practice and you’ll have coach Kill behind you”, quarterback Mitch Leidner said. Both Roderique and Lankford spoke to Kill’s penchant for eschewing any and all excuses in favor of a laser-like focus on getting the best of his athletes.
Kill is one of those guys…the ones that fans in other programs complain about…a good guy who runs a clean program and takes steps to make sure his players learn life lessons, school lessons and football lessons.
That was tough for Kill to say. Whether Claeys gets the job, likely will depend on if Beth Goetz becomes the permanent athletic director. “None. I’ve left it all right here in the great state of Minnesota, and I have no regrets”. The Gophers went 4-3 when Claeys was acting coach two years ago, filling in while Kill was dealing with seizures. Under Kill’s direction, Minnesota also erased a 14-point halftime deficit at Nebraska to beat the ranked Huskers on the road for the first time since 1960.
After just one losing season, Kill had the Gophers winning, and playing in three straight bowl games. But I did what it took. “He put every ounce into the players, the players he recruited and the coaching staff he brought together”.
Kill worked his way up the many rungs of the coaching ladder with a track record of a program-builder. It had been a big problem: kidney cancer in 2005. “I don’t want to be a liability”.
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The Gophers went to three bowl games under Kill after going 3-9 his first year on campus, but lost all three. He took time off in 2013 after he missed a game at Michigan for health reasons. The Gophers recorded a 994 Academic Progress Rate (APR) for the 2013-14 season as well as the 2012-13 and 2011-12 seasons. Kill’s contract contains details in case he was unable to coach for an extended period of time. In his spare time, the marketing executive volunteers as board president of the Epilepsy Foundation of Minnesota.
