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University of Minnesota Athletics
Blog: Good Weekend for Coach Kill
3/1/2011 12:00:00 AM | Football
University of Minnesota head football coach Jerry Kill enjoyed this past weekend.
Kill raised a little money for his program, got to spend time with Gopher and NFL legend Bobby Bell and was part of a fund-raiser held by the Minnesota Chapter of the NFL Alumni Association Sunday at the RiverCentre in St. Paul.
"I had a good weekend," Kill said. "Dick Coleman, who I knew when I was at Pittsburg State, flew in with Bobby Bell. I got a chance to spend some time with them at the (Minnesota-Michigan) basketball game. Dick made a nice contribution to our program while he was here."
Spending time with a Hall of Famer and raising some dough would be normally be a very good full weekend. But that was just Saturday. On Sunday, Coach Kill was among nearly 500 people to attend the NFL Alumni Association Minnesota Chapter fund-raiser in St. Paul. There were 39 former NFL players with ties to Minnesota in attendance, including numerous former Gophers.
"It was a tremendous event," Coach Kill said. "I want to compliment the Minnesota Chapter for doing a great job. They raised around $100,000 to support 10 or 12 children's charities in the Twin Cities. I was just glad to be a guest at such a special event that is so important to the Twin Cities and all the charities who benefitted from it."
Kill said one of the highlights of the evening for him was to hear from two individuals who had benefitted from a couple of the charities that funds were being raised for. One was a cancer survivor and the other was a young man who spoke about the influence Big Brothers has played in his life.
"After hearing that, I said everyone involved in that fund-raiser and those charities could go home and sleep good because they knew they made a difference in a child's life," Kill said.
Coach Kill also had the opportunity to briefly address the audience.
"I just asked all the NFL players in the room to stand up and I told them what a great game they played," Kill said. "And I told them how great it was that they were giving back to the community."
Charley Walters had a small piece on this event in his column in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. In that column, he quoted former Gopher and Washington Redskin Ray Hitchcock, who said that Coach Kill made a good impression.
"He was the last guy to leave," Hitchcock told Walters. "Coach Kill is a special person, one who has time for everyone and is not looking over your shoulder at who's in the room to talk to next."
-By Andy Seeley, Associate Director of Athletic Communications
