Salukis savior: Jerry Kill has reversed the fortunes of SIU football

Kill has reversed the fortunes of SIU football.

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Jerry Kill didn't need to be reminded of the mess he inherited when he was tapped to revive Southern Illinois' long-suffering football program. But the stranger next to him at a college basketball tournament months before he even took to the practice field couldn't resist.

"Why would you come to the burial ground of football coaches?" Kill recalls the skeptic poked that day about a program where five coaches mustered just two winning seasons in the previous 17.

Well, the school with a mascot named after an Egyptian dog no longer has a dog of a football program.

After back-to-back 10-2 seasons, the Salukis -- ranked atop the Division I-AA for several weeks last year -- again are favored to win their third-straight conference title and vie for their first national title in 22 years. The team is ranked fifth nationally in The Sports Network's preseason poll and Kill, who turns 44 on Aug. 24, is the reigning I-AA coach of the year.

The folksy man with a sharp drawl has pumped up this college campus where people not too long ago considered the football program a financial drain worth ditching.

"He's far exceeded any expectations," said Paul Kowalczyk, the school's athletic director who hired Kill and now hopes to keep him. Other struggling programs have inquired about Kill, who won the Gateway Conference in 2003 just two seasons after going 1-10 in his debut here.

Fans who turned out for a recent practice at McAndrew Stadium are clearly hoping Kill will stay for a long time.

Brian Brown, a student at SIU when the team won their last national championship in 1983, has witnessed the teams highs and lows.

"Over the years they have fallen on hard times, it was tough to watch, attendance was low and there was not a lot of winning, but Jerry's the real deal," said the Carterville man whose home Kill bought when he moved to town. "He's a genuine good man. He has created a culture of what it takes to be a team."

Fact is, Kill has been a winner anywhere he's been, although first impressions might have led people to think otherwise.

When he tried out in 1979 to be a linebacker for Kansas' Southwestern College, he had just 200 pounds on his 5-foot-10 frame.

"'You look more like a ... basketball player,"' he says the school's athletic director told him. "'I don't know if you're big enough to play football."'

But Kill gutted it out, eventually becoming a starter, all-conference player and two-time captain. As a senior, he was voted the team's most-inspirational player. This year, he was inducted into the school's Hall of Fame.

Kill went on to serve as defensive coordinator from 1983 to 1985 at Pittsburg (Kan.) State, where the Gorillas went 30-4 during that span. He spent two seasons at southwest Missouri's Webb City High, following up an 11-1 season with a 14-0 one and a state title before returning to Pitt State, this time as offensive coordinator from 1990 to 1993. The Gorillas made the NCAA playoffs each of those four seasons, going 43-7-1 and winning the Division II national title in 1991.

Michigan's Saginaw Valley State landed Kill as its coach in 1994, a season after finishing 4-7. Kill guided the Cardinals to 6-4 and 7-3 seasons in his first two years and by his third had them nationally ranked for the first time in 21 years. He went 9-2 each of his last two seasons there.

When Emporia (Kan.) State courted him in 1999, Kill initially declined but later changed his mind so he could be closer to his father, who had terminal liver cancer.

"The day I got to Emporia, my dad passed away," he said.

Kill's Hornets went 5-6 his first season and 6-5 the next before Southern Illinois came courting, displeased by Jan Quarless' 14-30 showing over four seasons.

Wooing Kill wasn't easy. Many considered the program and its substandard facilities a laughingstock. A losing mentality permeated the locker room.

A friend suggested Kowalczyk give Kill a look.

"He described Jerry as a Pied Piper -- that if you get the guy there, he would get the fans sold on the team," Kowalczyk said. "His track record of winning speaks for itself, and I heard that student-athletes would go to the ends of the earth for him."

Literally. When Kill took the Emporia State job, his former players at Saginaw Valley State drove to Kansas to watch Kill's debut game. "That spoke volumes of the kind of commitment he got" from players, Kowalczyk said.

Southern eventually reeled him in.

Even as they floundered to 1-10 under Kill in 2001 -- quarterback Joel Sambursky's redshirt season -- Kill kept the defections from the frustrated team to a minimum.

"If you buy in, we're gonna turn things around," Sambursky, the league's reigning offensive player of the year, remembers Kill telling them.

The Salukis opened the 2002 season by drubbing Kentucky Wesleyan 78-0, three games before trouncing West Virginia Tech 76-21. On homecoming two weeks later, they beat Western Illinois for the first time in 19 seasons, then went on to beat Northern Iowa -- at the time, the reigning conference champs -- 42-13. It was the Panthers' most lopsided loss ever in the league dating to 1985.

That 4-8 season has given way to two consecutive Gateway titles.

On campus, there's energy about the football team. When Kowalczyk arrived here in 2000, season ticket sales numbered about 600, one-third of the demand last year. The locker room is being remodeled, and 6,000 square feet is being added to the weight room.

The 17,000-seat stadium now has 10,000 to 12,000 fans during home games.

"Certainly no story is more remarkable than the football turnaround and the job Jerry's done," Kowalczyk said.