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AFM Magazine

AFM Magazine


Program Architects

Four Coaches Reveal the Truth About Their Turnarounds
by: Matt Fulks
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Shortly after Jerry Kill took over the football program at Southern Illinois in 2001, he went to the Missouri Valley Conference basketball tournament to watch the Salukis. Call it school spirit. A chance to root for his new school. It also was a chance for his Kill’s wife, Rebecca, who was still living in Emporia, KS and getting the family’s former home ready to sell, to see her husband for the first time since he became the SIU coach.

Kill felt good about where he was. Sure, he was taking over a program that hadn’t had a winning season in nine years, but he was proud, decked out in his Saluki garb. As the Kills watched basketball, a man sitting next to Jerry turned and asked: “Are you the new football coach at Southern Illinois?” When Jerry Kill answered yes, he got a shocking response.

“Why would you come to the burial ground for football coaches?” the man asked.

Trying to turn around a losing program can be a daunting task. It’s even harder, though, when you don’t have good support from the administration, assistant coaches, players and even the community. Each of the following coaches has done a remarkable job of turning losing programs into winners. Although each situation is unique, each coach credits positive support as the reason for a successful overhaul.

“The biggest thing when you take over a program like this one, make sure you have a commitment from the top,” Kill said. “If you don’t have support, you have no chance.”


Bob Stitt • Colorado School of Mines

To this day, Bob Stitt isn’t sure why he said it. Today it almost seems crazy. After all, football at Colorado School of Mines was an afterthought. In its 80-year history of football, the Orediggers had recorded only 11 winning seasons. They were 1-9 in 1999, the year before Stitt took over.

But there was Stitt in 2001, before his team’s game at Fort Hays State, a team the Orediggers hadn’t beaten since 1968, telling his players that they needed a “defining moment to talk about in 20 years.”

The Orediggers trailed by 23 points with nine minutes left and then 17 points with less than two minutes remaining, and Fort Hays had the ball. So much for the “defining moment.”

“I still don’t know how to describe it,” Stitt says, “but we got the ball back, went into our two-minute offense, and somehow came back and won that game in overtime. I’ve never been a part of something like that. That got our kids believing that they could be winners.”
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Last year, on their way to a 12-1 record and second straight Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference championship, CSM also put together its fourth-straight winning season. That hadn’t been accomplished since 1912-15.

“Our kids now know that they can win,” said Stitt. “Last year they didn’t know that they could win. Now they’ve seen what they can do.”

When Stitt arrived at CSM, he put together a five-year plan to turn the program around. One of the first keys was changing attitudes of the players and administration at Colorado School of Mines, an NCAA Division II school, which has a long history for strong academics.

“There wasn’t an expectation of succeeding; the message to the kids was that it’s OK to lose,” he said. “The biggest thing when you come to a new program, is laying down the expectation and letting everyone know.

“The guys had to learn that even though they’re here to get a degree, we were going to succeed, too. Is it OK to be a bad employee or a bad husband or a bad father? No, you’re going to seek excellence in all that you do. For now, that includes football.”

Stitt added that the average grade-point average for his CSM recruits is an impressive 3.77. Through this quick turnaround that Stitt’s orchestrated, he said he’s learned that with a little work it’s possible to be successful in any situation.

“As a coach in a similar situation, you have to stay away from the excuses and focus on what you have,” Stitt explained. “Too many people are too quick to blame someone else or something else. When you’re a head coach, everything is a reflection of you. You have the power to fix it and that’s what you have to do.”


Sean Callahan
Armwood High School, Seffner, Fla.

Armed with his new whistle and clipboard in 1990, Sean Callahan went to the first off-season workout to start turning around his Armwood High School Hawks, which had finished 0-10 the year before.

“Two kids showed up,” remembers Callahan, “and one of them told me that he had to be at work in about 30 minutes.”

But Callahan wasn’t going to be deterred. After all, in the mid 1980s, shortly after graduating from Slippery Rock State College in Pennsylvania, Callahan sold his high school ring for $100 and hitchhiked down to Florida in hopes of finding work. So, six years later, Callahan was going to make the most out of his first head-coaching job.

In his first five years at Armwood, Callahan’s Hawks posted one winning season. “Kids were finding ways to leave our program and head to another high school,” said Callahan. “I wasn’t making a difference for the kids. I thought about getting out of teaching and coaching. My wife talked me out of giving up.”

That’s a good thing, too. After 1994, Callahan’s fifth year, Armwood’s principal, who didn’t think Callahan needed any new assistant coaches, left the school. Suddenly, a new principal came in and asked how he could help.

“We were able to hire three new assistants,” says Callahan. “We went 8-2 that year. The key was getting a staff believing how I wanted to run the program, especially in the off-season. Everything has fallen into place after that.”

The Hawks have won the last two Class 4A state championships. In 2003, they became the first football team from Hillsborough County in 34 years to win the title. On their way to the 2004 title, the Hawks recorded five shutouts.

Good news travels great distance evidently, even from Seffner, a rural town just outside Tampa. “A father in Queens, New York called me, saying that he was going to move his family to Seffner so his son could play football at Armwood,” Callahan said. “The dad’s career doesn’t fit anything down here, but he’s moving them here just for his kid to play football. Talk about gratifying.

“We’re proof that you just have to hang in there and have an administration to support you. Then, get people to believe in you. I can make people believe they can do it. It’s huge to get people to buy into what you’re doing.”


Jerry Kill
Southern Illinois University

Southern Illinois hadn’t won a conference title or played in the postseason for 20 years before Jerry Kill. During Kill’s job interview, he even learned that the football program had neared the administration’s chopping block. He asked for five years to turn it around. It took only three.

After going 1-10 in 2001 and then 4-8 the next season, the Salukis won their first 10 games of the 2003 campaign and finished 10-2. The Salukis then spent 10 weeks at the No. 1 slot of the Division I-AA polls in 2004.

“I’d like to say we thought we could turn it around that quickly, but I admit that I was pleasantly shocked,” said Kill. “The biggest thing when you come into a losing culture is that you have to change that culture. It changed quicker than we thought it would, and we lost some guys who couldn’t make the transition, but now we have a good foundation.

“It’s been a remarkable thing here, truly a miracle.”

Kill says that one key to the Salukis’ revival is his assistant coaches. Some have stayed with him since day one. “That’s the number one reason we’ve been able to turn this thing around,” he said. “Sooner or later they’ll go on to different jobs. But they’re a big reason for our success.”

Kill himself comes from a good coaching bloodline. He started as an assistant at Pittsburg State (Kan.) under Dennis Franchione, and also worked for Chuck Broyles at Pittsburg State.”I would not even be close to where I’m at if it weren’t for those two men,” Kill said. “If you’re in a situation that’s difficult, go visit people like them. I do that every year. They will take time for anybody.”

Oh, and by the way, Kill just happened to run into the man who made the comment at the basketball game about SIU being a “burial ground” for coaches.”I had forgotten about that guy until earlier this year,” Kill said. “We were ordering our second championship rings, and that guy is the representative for the ring company. What are the chances of that happening?”

Evidently about the same as Southern Illinois winning back-to-back Gateway Conference championships. “If I died tomorrow,” Kill says, “I’d know that we accomplished a lot at Southern Illinois. We have been blessed and we ought to be very thankful for what we have.”


Bobby Bentley
James Byrnes High School, Duncan, S.C.

Fate can play mean tricks on coaches that are trying to turn a program around. Just ask Bobby Bentley. In 1996, during Bentley’s second year as head coach at South Carolina’s James Byrnes High School, his 1-10 Rebels, which had been playing the “big” schools, made the state playoffs.

Eighth-seeded Byrnes traveled three hours to take on top-seeded Berkeley. Late in the fourth quarter, with Berkeley leading 10-7, the Rebels were driving with a chance to win. Fate reared its ugly head. The Rebels fumbled.

“That might’ve been the lowest point for me,” Bentley said. “That was a long three-hour bus ride back for us and probably a long trip for the 22 people in the stands cheering for us. That was a miserable time in my life. I never want to go back to that.”

If recent history’s any indication, Bentley won’t be headed down that road for awhile. After that 1-11 campaign, the Rebels were relatively successful for four years. Then in 2002, following a 10-4 season and a loss in the state semifinals, Byrnes started a stretch of three-straight Class 4A Division II state titles.

“Things have been great,” Bentley said. “We hope that now our players expect to win.”

Although James Byrnes had hit some lean years, the school had enjoyed success in the past. In fact, Bentley played at Byrnes when the team won the state championship in 1982, and then lost in the championship game in 1985.

When Bentley took over the program in 1995, though, just 28 of the school’s 1,750 students went out for football. “I don’t know if frustrating describes it enough,” Bentley said of seeing where the program had dropped in a decade.

Bentley points to 1997 as the key in his turnaround. The Rebels made the playoffs, but more importantly, he says, attitudes changed. People started believing in his system. “The kids learned that they have to invest in the program,” he said of the program that now has more than 190 players. “We also got some new coaches in there who were on the same ship. We didn’t have that early on.

“My advice is get a couple coaches that you can trust, and give them some ownership of the program. Then hopefully you can get guys to adapt to your style.”





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