E-mail received from Southern Illinois booster on Jerry Kill hire

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We received this e-mail from a SIU booster after reading Chris Monter's "10 Things" that Coach Kill needs to do story:

http://www.forums.gopherhole.com/boards/showthread.php?t=24622

Here is the e-mail we received from the SIU booster:

"Chris, I read your article on the Gopher fan page. I thought I might be able to shed a little light on Kill. In my opinion you could not have a better coach to revive your program. Kill is blue collar all the way. He came to an SIU program that everyone had given up on. We had the worst facilities in the conference. Expectations were low. Basically no one cared. Kill never used any of that as an excuse. Within a few years we were at the top of the conference. After a few more we were at the top of 1AA. The community really embraced this guy. They felt like he was one of them. Soon alumni stepped up and a state of the art weight room was built. This year a state of the art football stadium replaced the one that had been built by the WPA during the depression. The program came full circle.

Several people came before him including Shawn Watson, the OC at Nebraska, only to leave a few years later with their tails between their legs. Only Kill could turn things around. I think he had similar terrific results at NIU. I tr4uly feel he will do the same thing at Minnesota. Regarding recruiting, he has great ties in the Kansas City area. Several of his assistants coached in the Jayhawk league in Kansas so expect so top JC’s to be coming North. He has strong ties in Michigan and Florida as well as across Illinois. He will quickly establish himself with coaches in your area too. I would expect his whole staff to follow him including the strength coach. He commands loyalty.

Again, the AD made the right choice. Kill is the guy for this job. I did not mention the Jerry Kill cancer fund and the hundreds of people it has helped but I think you know my feelings for this hire without going into that.

Good Luck!"
 




Positive or negative, this is the kind of feedback we need to come to a clearer understanding of who we've hired.
 


I hope Kill's serious health issues are behind him. I know him from his HS coaching days and he's a hard-working, quality guy.
 

More clarity from those that have had first-hand exposure to Kill is very helpful during this meltdown phase on the Hole.
 


I have really become comfortable with the hire and I am in fact excited. I think Kill is a great hire and if he can turn programs like SIU around, I do not see how he does not have a great shot at doing the same here. For starters, the facilities are in place so now he just has to sell the player on his philosphy, which I think Kill can do quite easily.
 



+ 1

As I posted on another thread, my brother is a professor at Southern Illinois and they have nothing but positives to say about the guy down there, he is very well respected.

I did see them knocking down the old football stadium when I was down there visiting my brother last Spring, trust me when I say that before the new stadium was built, the old stadium would not even have been on par with most of the best high school stadiums here. One thing that Carbondale does that would be kind of cool here is that they paint huge Saluki paw prints (a Saluki is a dog for those that don't know) on the roads leading into the University, would be kind of cool to paint Gopher tracks or Gophers leading into the U campus, down University and Washington, etc.
 

Great to hear. I hope he's right.
 

GO4INLALALAND said:
I have really become comfortable with the hire and I am in fact excited. I think Kill is a great hire and if he can turn programs like SIU around, I do not see how he does not have a great shot at doing the same here. For starters, the facilities are in place so now he just has to sell the player on his philosphy, which I think Kill can do quite easily.
Click to expand...

Agree. I'm not completely ecstatic, but I certainly feel like we've hired a stable, no-nonsense type who knows how to get things done. I perused some of the other Big Ten fan forums to get a sense of what they're saying and the general consensus is that the U hired an underrated coach who will do an excellent job of getting the team to play hard, execute on both sides of the ball and be a very tough opponent every week.
 

I spent quite a while reading the NIU forums yesterday and they do not share the same enthusiam. I didn't pay any attention to the sour grapes posts by NIU members but instead tried to find the most objective and reasonable.

The general sentiment from NIU fans is that he is a fundementalist. He will coach up whatever talent he has well. He works hard and he's not flashy. On the downside they said he was/is all about him and his staff rather than the school. They also said his credit for turning around NIU is largely overstated since the year before he came was plagued by injuries. His recruiting abilities at the D1 level are also up in the air since he was only at NIU for 3 years. Perhaps worst, they really didn't like his inablity to win big games. Many referenced his record against "good" teams.

Several NIU board members also mentioned his "god-like" status at SIU so the OP isn't suprising.
 




stevedave23 said:
I spent quite a while reading the NIU forums yesterday and they do not share the same enthusiam. I didn't pay any attention to the sour grapes posts by NIU members but instead tried to find the most objective and reasonable.

The general sentiment from NIU fans is that he is a fundementalist. He will coach up whatever talent he has well. He works hard and he's not flashy. On the downside they said he was/is all about him and his staff rather than the school. They also said his credit for turning around NIU is largely overstated since the year before he came was plagued by injuries. His recruiting abilities at the D1 level are also up in the air since he was only at NIU for 3 years. Perhaps worst, they really didn't like his inablity to win big games. Many referenced his record against "good" teams.

Several NIU board members also mentioned his "god-like" status at SIU so the OP isn't suprising.
Click to expand...

I would expect the negative posts to be sour grapes. They just got dumped by their girlfriend for someone better and they are not happy about it. I am sure during the fb season there were no negative comments about Coach Kill's abilities or his personality.
 



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