Former Gophers Coach Jerry Kill left the University of Minnesota as one of the most beloved coaches in the history of the program. The chants of “JERRY, JERRY, JERRY” reverberated throughout TCF Bank Stadium during countless games. While Coach Kill had to retire last year, his legacy at Minnesota and beyond will never be forgotten.
Coach Kill captured his amazing life and all that he has overcome on and off the field in “Chasing Dreams”. Below is an excerpt from this fantastic book:
Chapter 8:
WHEN I TOOK THE head coaching job at the University of Minnesota in 2011, I never thought it would end the way it did. As much as I enjoyed every single part of the state of Minnesota and the university, it was perhaps the most difficult time of my life.
In the beginning, I was going all over the state and going 110 miles an hour day after day after day. When I came in to take over the job, I found things that had to be corrected and fixed immediately. We were about to lose scholarships because of our academics. We were way behind in the weight room. We were behind in operational money. We were behind in coaches’ salaries. We were behind in drawing people to games. We were behind in how people felt about the program. We were in very bad shape! I’m sorry to say it, but it was true.
I was told by people from all over the country, “You are never going to get it done at Minnesota. It’s a bad job.” Those were the feelings from the outside about the Minnesota football program. It’s just the way it was.
I think it was like that because of the culture that was there and had been there for decades. When you look at other schools, it was important for them to be successful on the football field. Football was a huge priority. It wasn’t like that at Minnesota.
All the losing was certainly a contributing factor to the negativity because it had been a reality for so long. And it was that way going way back. The love for Golden Gophers football made a change for the worse after some of the great Minnesota teams of the 1960s and 1970s. Minnesota has had some outstanding seasons in the past and won many national championships. We used that in recruiting, and yet it seemed to have been forgotten by many of the fans and longtime Minnesotans.
I don’t know, because I wasn’t here, but something changed from the 1970s up until now. Things had really slipped dramatically. The last Rose Bowl team was 1961, playing in the 1962 Rose Bowl. That’s a few years back! Glen Mason coached at Minnesota for a while from 1997 to 2006, and Glen was an outstanding coach. A lot of people talk about the time Lou Holtz coached there and those great years, but Coach Holtz had a losing record at Minnesota. It was just tough to win there.
So with that history, I came in and tried to change it. It wasn’t close to where Glen Mason had left it. Coach Mason, as I said before, was a good football coach. So we had to work our ass off just to get it back to where Coach Mason had it when he left the program. I was asked one time if I would have taken the job knowing the condition of the program. My answer was “Probably,” because I like challenges. Big-time challenges never scared me off. I mean, that’s who I am. That’s what got me to where I am. If I was asked that now, I would likely say, “No, I want to go somewhere where I don’t have to almost kill myself to win.”
But it was what it was. I felt the only way to be successful there was to change just about everything about the football program and anything and everything that had any connection to it. Our staff worked hard together to get the program right. I put pressure on them to do their jobs, and I didn’t want to hear excuses. We had to fix things and fi x them in a hurry if we wanted any chance at winning.
It’s interesting, because when you take a job as a head football coach, you don’t get to really see what you are getting yourself into. What I mean is you don’t get to make a visit and walk around much and see anything. And the reason is, there is a lot of secrecy in the process. There has to be. It’s just the way it is in our profession. I understand that, so the bottom line is, you really don’t know much of anything until you arrive with the job in hand. I saw a little at Southern Illinois, and some of that was in the dark, as I like to kid Paul Kowalczyk, but nothing compared to what I saw once I had taken the job. It was the same at Minnesota.
The indoor facility at Minnesota was the worst I had ever seen in college football. People really have no idea. We won and we recruited there with our players eating in a hallway. We talked about student welfare while our kids were eating in a damn hallway! How do you recruit to that?
Rebecca said many times, “Jerry, if you got a choice and you could stay at the Ritz-Carlton or a one-star hotel for the same price, where would you stay?” I think that’s obvious; you would stay at the Ritz-Carlton.
Keeping that in mind, we knew we would not get the five-star athletes out of high school to go there. People used to say to us, “Why aren’t you getting the top kids, the five-star players?” Hell, we had no chance to get them. So we had to go after other kids and develop and coach them. Minnesota was a total reconstruction job.
And then you got outside and around the state, and the negativity toward Gophers football was incredible. It was not good anywhere. And on top of that, when I was hired, I was not a big-name football coach to the Minnesota faithful. Most people had never heard of me, so it was a top priority to get out there and tell people I knew what the hell I was doing.