There’s a white Ford F-150 pickup truck parked behind the Bierman Field Athletic Building at the University of Minnesota. It belongs to fourth-year head football coach Jerry Kill, who’s probably the only head coach in the Big Ten driving a vehicle with over 70,000 miles on it.
The truck says a lot about Kill.
It represents his roots in rural Kansas, his no-frills approach, and his ability to navigate life’s potholes without ending up in a ditch. But it’s something of a miracle that Kill is driving at all. So when he climbs behind the wheel, cues up George Strait or Zac Brown Band, and heads to work each morning, he knows the truck represents the fulfillment of a promise he made to himself in the middle of the 2013 football season, when football took a backseat in his life.
That season was a spectacular one for a Golden Gophers program that hasn’t won a Big Ten title since 1967. The team finished 8-4 and went to a bowl game for the second consecutive year. It’s no surprise to college football insiders that the program turned around after Kill, 53, arrived in Minnesota from Northern Illinois University for the 2011 season. Working with a staff that’s been with him from the start, Kill has turned losers into winners at schools like Saginaw Valley State, Emporia State, and Southern Illinois. Right now he’s starting his 21st year as a head coach with 144 wins, putting him ahead of all his Big Ten peers.
Still, last season, some questioned Kill’s fitness for the job, saying he should quit or be fired. It’s not that Kill is a bad coach. It’s that he’s one of at least 2.2 million Americans with epilepsy.
“Epilepsy is a bad word to people. They don’t understand it,” Kill says. “In fact, a lot of people don’t want others to know they have it.”
Kill used to be one of them.
The ancients thought people with epilepsy were possessed by demons. The seizures can be shocking to witness, and that adds to the fear for—and fear of—people who have them. During a tonic-clonic seizure (formerly called a “grand mal”), one of the types that Kill gets, the victim usually drops to the ground and convulses; his eyes may roll back, and he may foam at the mouth and bleed from biting his tongue. Such an episode typically lasts one to three minutes.
We now know that epilepsy is a neurological disorder; if you’ve had two or more unprovoked seizures separated by at least 24 hours, you’re in the club. Seizures can result from a head injury, stroke, or brain tumor. In 60 percent of cases, though, the cause is unknown. Epilepsy can’t be cured, but in many cases the seizures can be controlled through medication. A good diet, exercise, adequate sleep, and avoiding triggers such as stress and caffeine can help. Good luck with that plan if you’re a Big Ten football coach.
“Some people are able to control their seizures with medication while others aren’t,” says Vicki Kopplin, executive director of the Epilepsy Foundation of Minnesota. “Even among those who have them under control, it’s possible to fall out of balance and have a setback.”
It’s easy to understand why so many people are reluctant to admit that they have epilepsy. In fact, until two years ago, Kill described his condition only as a “seizure disorder.” He had beaten the kidney cancer he was diagnosed with back in 2005 and went on to build a successful career; epilepsy was not going to be his legacy.
But ignoring it became increasingly difficult. In fact, one of the character traits that helped him become successful may have also triggered his seizures: his capacity for hard work.
Kill’s father, Jim,had a simple approach to work: “If someone pays you for eight hours, you give ’em 10,” he’d say. Back in Kansas, Jim worked full-time on the flight line at Cessna Aircraft Company in Wichita; at home in Cheney, he grew crops and raised livestock—and hardworking children—on the family’s modest 3 acres. Starting at age 14 or so, the Kill boys, Jerry and Frank, were the key farmhands. They baled hay, pulled rye, stacked wood. “My dad was a hard guy to please,” Kill says today.
Like many of the young men in the area, Frank stayed in Cheney to start a business. But Jerry wanted to be the first in his family to get a college degree. He played outside linebacker at nearby Southwestern College, got married at age 21 to his college girlfriend, Rebecca, and began a slow rise through the coaching ranks. “We lived in a trailer for four or five years,” he says with a wistful smile. “But we appreciated what we had.”
When Kill landed his first head coaching job at Saginaw, he hired young coaches who were like him, men from small towns and small-time programs who were willing to put in long hours. Together they replicated their success blueprint on every step up the coaching ladder.
“We go to work. We play defense. We run the ball. We build it brick by brick,” Kill says. “We’ve had to do it the hard way because of the programs we’ve taken over. Minnesota is not an easy job, but it’s a good job.”
