Presbyterian hiring anti-punting HS coach Kelley
Presbyterian College is set to hire successful and unconventional high school coach Kevin Kelley as the program's new head coach, a school official tells ESPN.
Presbyterian hiring a coach that never punts and always onside kicks
- Thread starter robertfootball
- Start date
Well this ought to be interesting...LOL.
On a lighter note, we usually turned the ball over before we had a chance to punt last year.
On a lighter note, we usually turned the ball over before we had a chance to punt last year.
Bentley left the school because they lied to him about their commitment to football. And then PC went out and hired Harold Nichols to do to him, what they tried to do to Bentley. Nichols was there for 8 years producing a putrid 21-67 record! This new guy is a patsy for a school that doesn’t give a darn about football.
I think you meant punter not place kicker, it was probably that damn autocorrect feature that messed it up.
I suppose Presbyterian feels the don't have much to loose, but hiring a HS coach to become you HC ?
#Dubious.
#Dubious.
Maybe the guy just wants to coach college football, no matter the risk. Otherwise, I don't see why in the world he would take this job.. After having football visions of grandeur that they couldn't afford, PC turned 180 degrees and basically thrown football to the curb. And the administration has proven time after time that football is no longer important at PC. No scholarships. Assistants could make better money coaching high school ball. They need to quit pretending and just shut it down altogether.
They need to quit being stupid and go back to playing Newberry. I still don’t know why they got too big for their britches and decided playing D2 was beneath them.
I've talked and emailed this guy. He is awesome. He will talk football with you all day. I called out of the blue to talk to him about some ideas after I read an article about him. The front office put me back to him, I told him that he has no idea who I am and I just wanted to ask him a few questions. We spoke for about 30 minutes. Gave me his email and said to call or email anytime. Who does that?
18 years as head coach with a total record of 216-29-1. Before becoming head coach at Pulaski Academy HS, the team had never been past the semifinals and had only been there twice. Since then, the school has been to 15 semifinals, 12 championship games, and won 9 state championships. He was has been named USA Today National Coach of the Year, coached in the Under Armour All America Game, appeared in multiple television stories including HBO Real Sports, and a 30 for 30 Short. There will be a series of released videos of the entire program on CoachTube.
18 years as head coach with a total record of 216-29-1. Before becoming head coach at Pulaski Academy HS, the team had never been past the semifinals and had only been there twice. Since then, the school has been to 15 semifinals, 12 championship games, and won 9 state championships. He was has been named USA Today National Coach of the Year, coached in the Under Armour All America Game, appeared in multiple television stories including HBO Real Sports, and a 30 for 30 Short. There will be a series of released videos of the entire program on CoachTube.
Sounds like an interesting dude - I might actually start paying attention to PC football.
Onto the question about PC actually caring about football - anyone know why they moved from the Big South (which seems to be a perfect fit - especially regionally) to the Pioneer Football League (with has schools literally all over the country)? If they didn't want to spend money before, how are they going to pay for those trips to California, Indiana, Minnesota, New York and Iowa?
Onto the question about PC actually caring about football - anyone know why they moved from the Big South (which seems to be a perfect fit - especially regionally) to the Pioneer Football League (with has schools literally all over the country)? If they didn't want to spend money before, how are they going to pay for those trips to California, Indiana, Minnesota, New York and Iowa?
PC tried to be Wofford without Jerry Richardson money. PC and Wofford were pretty even in the late 80s when I was at PC, but trying to match a school with that much Richardson money and Carolina Panther publicity led to the disaster that is PC football. I stopped giving any $$ to PC a while ago because the school has gone downhill in the last few years. The firing of Coach Spangler was a disgrace.
The Pioneer League is non-scholarship so I would assume not having to fund the 63 permissible FCS-level scholarships would give them more than ample money to cover the travel costs. Davidson is in that league too so at least one game is a bus trip.
I've been waiting for a college to hire this guy for years. It will he interesting to see if his system works. He basically used analytics and concluded the conventional wisdom was wrong.
As a Wofford grad I have somewhat different understanding. Richardson money was and always has been second place. The big money at Wofford has always been Roger Milliken. That does not mean Richardson wasn’t important. It’s just that other factors were more important.
Wofford did an internal review in the mid 70’s led by President Joab Lessene.
The two game changing recommendations were
• Wofford needed to go coed. Which it did in 1977, my freshman year. It radically changed the college. It knocked out the bottom third of the male students and replaced it with women, who damn near all were in the top 10% of their HS Class. SAT scores went up over 200 points in 5 years.
• That if Wofford wanted advance academically it had to also advance athletically. So Wofford started the decade long process of going from NAIA to NCAA D1. Lessene marshaled money for athletic leadership talent and facilities(this is where Richardson came to bear, but Jimmy Gibbs also gave huge bucks also. FB stadium is named after him)
Lessene coached HS football and actually became the TE coach at Wofford after he retired from the presidency. They made four truly inspired hires. Mike Ayres as head football coach, Richard Johnson as head basketball coach, Mike Young as assistant basketball coach AND lastly but maybe most importantly Danny Morrison as AD. Morrison eventually became SOCON commissioner, TCU AD, and president of the Carolina Panthers. These 5 were not only very talented, they had a vision for the future, they were committed to Wofford, and Wofford was committed to them.
PC did not have the epiphany about athletics until 25 years after Wofford. Wofford at that point was in a strong SOCON: Marshall, App St, Ga. Southern. Wofford had a seat at the table. PC, it seems to me, came to the game late and never found a good landing place in a strong conference
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Interesting hire but one schools like this should make more often.
As a neutral I would never go to a PC football game but I might go watch to one now to see his style.
As a neutral I would never go to a PC football game but I might go watch to one now to see his style.
Kelly is a national name. Many large media publications have done articles on him. This is a homerun hire for PC honestly and it is thinking outside the box
With that said if he has any success he will bolt. PC is a terrible job and Clinton isn't a town people dream of living in.
What is interesting is Kelly is a big personality. He wants media attention and got a lot of it in Little Rock. He will be ignored in Clinton as PC is a program no one bothers to pay attention to
With that said if he has any success he will bolt. PC is a terrible job and Clinton isn't a town people dream of living in.
What is interesting is Kelly is a big personality. He wants media attention and got a lot of it in Little Rock. He will be ignored in Clinton as PC is a program no one bothers to pay attention to
Outside of those times like Saban's MNC game onside kick or Auburn @ USC 3rd quarter 2006, you usually know what the other team will do. But that doesn't guarantee that you can use that info to your advantage. In this case, weird as it seems, maybe PC could pin people deep with fake onside kicks that go deep or quick kicks on 4th down haha. It will definitely be interesting.
I wonder if they will end up having a great onside kicking team? And is onside kicking something that you can become great in? It always seems that there is an element of luck every time - but maybe that's just because no one ever does it consistently so no one ever perfects it.
My Dad graduated from Wofford in, I believe, 1936. He loved the place.
Excellent breakdown of the rise of Wofford Athletics. I was at Furman in the early 90s before Wofford joined the SoCon (back when Furman was still one of the top 3 in conference every year). It was really good football to watch, without the hassle of game day at Williams Brice. We lost on a last second field goal to Ga Tech the year after they won the NC, and a couple of years after I graduated we clobbered UNC by three TDs
I say all of this because as Furman faded, the new kid Wofford filled the void. And I always wondered how Wofford managed to pull off their rise. This is a great explanation of what solid leadership can do for a school.
Yeah, “They thought I was crazy at masters & Johnson”, but I showed them!
It was a twofer, on the way down could catch their day game & then catch ours @ night……..uknow Bloody Mary’s in the AM, then martinis’ @ night.
That was a good and interesting breakdown of Wofford - I forgot about Milliken $ and I didn't even know about women being excluded until the 70's. And you should know that any time a woman walks into the room, the average IQ goes up.
And Spartanburg sure > Clinton.
My Fr. Year Wofford had 1200 men and 30 women on campus. All 30 were very bright and driven and were successful.
Upper class men were angry about their presence. My fraternity actually forbade us from dating them. It eventually ruined the Wofford-Converse relationship.
Attending Wofford during the depression....... now that must be a helluva story!
He grew up without his Dad, who died in the flu epidemic of 1918-1919. He was raised by his mother, who taught school mostly in Mullins, S.C, and his spinster aunt, who was a registered nurse in a doctor's office. He worked some during high school (11th was the highest grade at the time), but those ladies got him through.
I bet that guy had some great stories to tell - hope you were able to hear some of them.
I did hear some of them. But I miss my Dad every day. He was a splendid man.
we have fans that will agree with that philosophyPresbyterian hiring anti-punting HS coach Kelley
Presbyterian College is set to hire successful and unconventional high school coach Kevin Kelley as the program's new head coach, a school official tells ESPN.www.espn.com
Paul Johnson at GT & Ga. Southern and also Mike Ayres at Wofford espoused this theory in a bit modified form.
If the offense was beyond their own 35 they went for it. Now there were exceptions: 4th and 15, up by 3 scored in the 4th quarter, and other time and score considerations.
They of course ran the updated version of the wishbone. They just believed that since you only saw their O once a year, you did not have the discipline or talent to stop them in 4 downs.
Weirdly Wofford recruited the hell out punters and had a streak of like 7 years having the all conference punter.
The lower the level of competition the easier it is to take this approach
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