BLACKSBURG, Va. — When Justin Fuente invited Jerry Kill to take in a few of Virginia Tech’s August practices, he really didn’t know where it would go.
Kill, the football lifer who’s best known for his rebuild job at Minnesota and the epileptic seizures that have twice led to his resignation from coaching jobs, stayed at Fuente’s house, watched the Hokies in a few workouts and offered feedback on what Tech was doing, program-wide.
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With Kill having a solid gig as Southern Illinois’ athletic director, Fuente didn’t think anything would materialize with the Hokies on a full-time basis. But he could sense the 58-year-old Kill, who last worked in a football role as Rutgers’ offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2017, still had that itch.
“I think that I’m safe in saying that he does not want to be very far from football,” said Fuente, who on Monday announced Kill’s addition to Virginia Tech as a special assistant to the head coach. “That is in his blood. That is who he is.”
It’s an interesting addition for Virginia Tech (2-1, 0-1 ACC), which has scuffled along in its first few weeks, losing to Boston College and being far from impressive in wins against Old Dominion and Furman. The Hokies’ recent lackluster play is sure to inspire all sorts of assumptions about the timing of Kill’s addition to the staff, even if it sounds like it was in the works for some time.
Besides the fact that the Dwight Schrute references write themselves with the “assistant to the” title, it comes not long after embattled Florida State coach Willie Taggart added long-time coordinator Jim Leavitt as a defensive analyst to his struggling Seminoles squad. And it’s sure to draw comparisons to something rival UVa did during Mike London’s tenure, adding long-time coach Tom O’Brien as an assistant in part to marshal along the program, though Fuente’s resume of running a winning FBS program is much longer than London’s was at the time.
Kill, who could not be reached for comment Monday, has a vague title at Tech, perhaps purposely so. NCAA rules prevent him from doing any coaching of players either on or off the field, though he may observe practice and can travel to games. Fuente was quick to note that this has nothing to do with defensive coordinator Bud Foster’s pending retirement. And Kill is not filling the duties of former director of football operations Danielle Bartelstein, who recently took an operations job with the College Football Playoff.
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It sounds like he’ll largely serve as a sounding board for coaches.
“I expect him to be a resource for all of us to use in terms of planning, management,” Fuente said. “He’s a guy that can help us as we plan — both game plan and practice plan. (Do an) evaluation of everything we are doing here.”
Filling that role requires some trust from the head coach, and Kill clearly has Fuente’s respect, certainly when you consider he’s coming on board at Virginia Tech on a two-year letter of appointment at $175,000 per year, in line with the 10th assistant on the Hokies’ staff, assistant head coach and executive director of player development Adam Lechtenberg.
The two first crossed paths as conference rivals in the 2000s at what was then called the I-AA level, Kill the head coach at Southern Illinois, where he’d revived the program and gone to five straight postseasons, and Fuente an offensive assistant who eventually rose to coordinator for Denver Johnson at Illinois State.
Both are tight with TCU coach Gary Patterson, too. Fuente coached on Patterson’s Horned Frogs teams from 2007-11. Kill and Patterson go much further back. Both are Kansas natives who played for Dennis Franchione at different schools and worked for him as an assistant at Pittsburg State, again at different times. But they’re close friends. Kill served as the best man at Patterson’s wedding.
It’s why Fuente trusted Kill to speak candidly about what he saw at practice this August.
“It was really good,” Fuente said. “I told him I wanted to talk about everything from the minute details of what he noticed. I’ve done this before with other coaches — people you know that you can bring in that will tell you the truth.
“You don’t really want someone to come in and say, ‘Yup, everything looks good,’ and leave. You want somebody that has got the courage and knowledge base to give you good feedback, but also understands that some of it we can take and implement, but we can’t implement all of it. If everything looks different, situations are different. Everything from how practice was organized to personnel to scheme and assignments and all that sort of stuff.”
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Kill has plenty of football wisdom to impart. He’s a 30-plus-year coaching veteran who’s worked on both sides of the ball and found success at multiple levels, taking Southern Illinois to the I-AA playoffs five times, getting Northern Illinois to the MAC title game in Year 3 and leading a turnaround at Minnesota after being hired prior to the 2011 season. In 2014, he got the Gophers to finish with a Big Ten record above 500 for the first time in 11 years, taking them to a bowl game in three straight seasons.
Health issues forced him to resign in the middle of 2015, however. Kill has suffered from epileptic seizures throughout his career, twice having them on gamedays in 2011. He took a leave of absence in 2013 to get them under control. Though he returned and was the 2014 Big Ten coach of the year, he stepped down on Oct. 28, 2015, after seven games, citing health reasons.
After a year off, he returned to football as Rutgers’ offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2017, hoping he could manage his epilepsy in a less stressful assistant role, but he suffered another seizure after taking a sideline hit early in the year and missed some time. At the urging of doctors and his wife, he stepped down after the season, later taking a job back at Southern Illinois as athletic director, first on an interim basis and, since February, permanently.
Fuente had his doubts that Kill would want to leave there. Southern Illinois is special to Kill, a place with strong bonds and plenty of relationships. And there were family considerations. Kill’s a grandfather now. Fuente spoke on the phone to Kill’s wife, Rebecca, not wanting to talk the family into anything they didn’t want to do but outlining what he thought was a genuine opportunity and mutual interest.
In the end, Fuente had a major asset on his side: football, as it has throughout Kill’s life, kept calling.
“I hope I’m not stepping out of line here by saying in his heart and soul,” Fuente said, “he’s a football man.”
(Photo of Jerry Kill: Michael Hickey / Getty Images)