7/11/2024 7:48:00 PM | Football
There was no one quite like Monte Kiffin.
Hired 40 years ago as NC State’s head football coach, Kiffin passed away on Thursday at the age of 84 in Oxford, Miss.
The former Nebraska player and assistant was a protégé of Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne and an assistant of former NC State coach Lou Holtz at Arkansas. He was a defensive genius who had a long career as an assistant coach and defensive coordinator in the National Football League.
And as much as Wolfpack fans know about the antics of Holtz, basketball coach Jim Valvano, and a cast of other coaching characters through the years, Kiffin was unique among them all, a three-year legacy as head coach (1980-82) that is still vivid in program annals some four decades later.
What do you expect from someone who had to be talked out of wrestling an alligator one year at the Orange Bowl as an assistant coach?
Who else would dress up in red-and-white clothes with a cowboy hat and mask to interrupt the NC State orchestra’s spring concert by riding in on a white horse as they played “The William Tell Overture” just to promote his first spring football game? Kiffin did.
Who else would strap on a parachute and jump out of a helicopter – from no more than five feet off the ground – the day before his first career game at his only head coaching job? Kiffin did.
Who else, just before the first time he ever faced rival North Carolina, would get into the ring at Reynolds Coliseum with former heavyweight boxing champion Joe Frazier, who wore a Natural Light T-shirt that said “Smoke Carolina” on the back, for a one-round title bout as part of a students-only pep rally? Kiffin did.
In the early days, Kiffin won out with antics that caught the eye of local and national media, especially when he took his team to play national powers like Penn State and Miami and the ACC powers of the time, Maryland, Clemson, and North Carolina.
After his time at NC State, Kiffin began a series of short stints in the NFL for the Green Bay Packers, Buffalo Bills, Minnesota Vikings (twice), New York Jets, and New Orleans Saints. In 1996, he became the defensive coordinator for the Buccaneers where he won Super Bowl 37.
Kiffin went on to become one of the most influential defensive minds in college and pro football history. The mastermind behind the Tampa 2 scheme, his defensive philosophy had several hallmarks: speed over size and strength, preventing scores over preventing yardage, multiple defenses from one look, and attacking and causing turnovers.
Football and family were intertwined for Kiffin. He most recently served as a player personnel analyst for his oldest son, Lane, at Mississippi.
His youngest son Chris, who was born in Raleigh during Kiffin’s NC State tenure, is the linebackers coach for the NFL’s Houston Texans.
by Tim Peeler for Coman Publishing
