Roy Kidd Head Football Coach e-mail

For the average head football coach, a 6-5 season is, on average, more successful than not.
About half the coaches in any other sport would trade their record in a given season for one in which 55 percent of the games concluded with a victory.
But there is nothing about Roy Kidd’s life or athletic career that causes one to use the word average (unless you want to suggest that about his golf game).
Which is why the 1996 college football season and the 6-5 record recorded by Kidd’s Eastern Kentucky University football team have haunted the coach, his staff and his returning players since last November.
It was the worst record by an Eastern Kentucky football team in 20 seasons, since 1977’s 5-5 record. It was the first time the Colonels had failed to make the Division I-AA, post-season playoffs in 11 seasons. It was only the third time they had not made the post-season playoffs since that even more dreadful year of 1977.
The only way to get 1996 behind them is to do what they did in 1978--get on with another season and a record more in keeping with what they expect of themselves.
Roy Kidd can hardly wait. He’s getting ready the way he always has: hours upon hours of meetings with his assistants and film study of his team and their early season opponents. In other words, hard work.
Just what you would expect from one of the most successful and respected coaches in the history of his sport. This will be his 43rd year as a football coach, his 34th year as the head coach at his alma mater and the 40th year that he has had the primary responsibility for a football team.
His name is on the stadium, and it is engraved in the record books alongside the sport’s giants--Bear Bryant, Joe Paterno, Bobby Bowden, Pop Warner. His 272 victories rank him sixth all time.
Every fall, a new chapter of the Roy Kidd story is written. The page turns. The characters change. What doesn’t change is what the coach expects of himself, his staff and his team, and the way he deals with the world around him.
Since 1956, Kidd-coached players have been winning on fall weekends, then moving on to successful lives. He always has followed a simple philosophy. “I try to treat my players, my coaching staff, the people I work with, the way I would like to be treated,” he said. “I tell my coaches, ‘You treat these young men like you’d like to be treated’.”
His players remember.
“He has been the most important man in my life. He set me straight, made me care about school and about myself. And he taught me how to win,” said Wayne Bowlin, who played on the 1956 Madison High School team, Coach Kidd’s first year as a head coach. “Those lessons have stayed with me. There’s rarely a day I don’t think of something I learned from Coach Kidd.” (Bowlin recently retired after a successful career as a coach, teacher and principal; his son, Mike, now a college assistant coach, played for Coach Kidd at EKU.)
“Coach Kidd has helped many, many athletes develop not only their athletic skills, but their character as well. What these kids are hearing today from him are the same things we heard from him 30 years ago,” said Jim Guice, two-time, All-OVC quarterback who directed the Colonels in 1966, 1967 and 1968. (Guice is General Manager of the Miami Division of Ryder Transportation Services.)
“Coach Kidd changed my life,” said Jim Demler, a standout defensive tackle in the late 1960s. “He believed in me and gave me a chance when others wouldn’t. In addition to his outstanding knowledge of the game that he passed on to his players, he treated everyone with respect.” (Dr. Demler is a urologist in Sarasota, Florida.)
“Coach Kidd and his staff make players better than they think they can be,” said Wally Chambers, a two-time All-OVC and All-American defensive tackle in the early 1970s. (Chambers played seven years in the NFL, was its Defensive Rookie of the Year in 1973 and made the Pro Bowl. Since then, he has worked as an NFL and college coach.)
“No matter how big your reputation was, or where you came from, everyone was treated the same,” said Robyn Hatley, a two-time, All-OVC offensive tackle in the mid-1970s. “Coach Kidd gave us all a sense of pride, because of the way he ran his program.” (Dr. Hatley is a pediatric surgeon at the Medical College of Georgia.)
“You can tell the first time you meet him that Coach Kidd tells you the truth,” said John Jackson, a two-time, All-OVC offensive tackle in the mid-1980s. “He always tells you where you stand. I’ve heard from other guys ... that a lot of schools try to hide things from you and you don’t learn the truth until after you get there. With Coach Kidd, you know.” (Jackson is entering his 10th year as a starting offensive tackle with the Pittsburgh Steelers.)
“Coach Kidd always wants you to do the right thing,” said Aaron Jones, two-time All-OVC and All-American defensive tackle in the late 1980s. “He gives good advice, and he knows what the young guys love to do. You could never pull anything over on him. On campus or in town, he knows.” (Jones, the 19th player taken in the 1988 NFL draft, played nine years in the league, through the 1996 season.)
The man also is a football coach with few peers. Since 1978, when Division I-AA was formed, Eastern Kentucky has the fourth winningest college football program in Division I. The 180 Colonel wins in the 19 seasons since 1978 are exceeded only by Nebraska, Brigham Young and Florida State among the 200 Division I and I-AA schools.
For the 19 years there has been a Division I-AA, EKU has stood at its pinnacle. Among current participating schools, only Georgia Southern and Youngstown belong in the same paragraph.
Before he was a coach, Roy Kidd was a player. Just as in his coaching career, as a player he stood out way above the crowd.
At Corbin High School in southeastern Kentucky, Kidd made first-team all-state in the three sports in which he competed--football, basketball and baseball.
Kidd turned down a scholarship to play for Bear Bryant at the University of Kentucky because his favorite sport was baseball--and the football coaches at Eastern Kentucky were willing to let him play both sports.
Which isn’t to say that he couldn’t play football. His senior year at Eastern, Kidd was an All-American quarterback.
After one year as a graduate assistant at Eastern and another year at a local high school, Kidd was named the football coach at one of Kentucky’s smallest high schools, Richmond Madison, just across the street from the EKU campus.
In his six years there, Kidd’s Madison teams won 54 games and lost 10. There was a 27-game winning streak; in one 21-game stretch, Kidd’s teams allowed a total of 15 points. Kidd was Kentucky Coach of the Year in 1961, his last year at Madison.
Kidd served the next two years as a college assistant, in 1962 at Morehead and in 1963 at Eastern. He began the 1964 season as the head coach at his alma mater.
Now, he begins his 33rd consecutive season in that job, a one-school tenure exceeded only by Grambling’s Eddie Robinson among Division I coaches.
Kidd’s first Ohio Valley Conference (OVC) championship came in 1967, which ended with a Grantland Rice Bowl victory (27-13) over Ball State. The second OVC title came the next year, as a team led by quarterback Jim Guice and split end Aaron Marsh (AFL Rookie of the Year in 1968) set the standard for future teams.
Things began to get really interesting in 1978, when the NCAA created two levels in Division I football. Division I-AA was formed when some conferences (the Southern, Southland and Big Sky) stepped down from Division I and others (the OVC, Yankee, Colonial, Southwestern and Gateway) stepped up from Division II.
That was a critical moment, because Division I-AA schools could award 65 scholarships, 25 more scholarships than Roy Kidd had ever had before. The coach was able to bring in more undeveloped recruits who were much like the best players who had come before them--like Guice, Marsh and Chambers. These were players with talent, but who perhaps were an inch shorter or a step slower or a few press clippings lighter than the athletes pursued by the major colleges.
The first I-AA season, 1978, the Colonels were 8-2 but did not make the playoffs. Then began this four-year run:
- In 1979, the Colonels won their first playoff game, 33-30 in overtime over Nevada, then methodically dispatched Lehigh, 30-7. It was Eastern’s first national championship.
- In 1980, EKU made it to the final game again, losing 31-29 to Boise State in the game’s final 25 seconds on a fourth down desperation pass.
- The 1981 season produced a 12-2 record and playoff victories over Delaware and Boise State. But the season ended in crushing disappointment with a 34-23 loss to Idaho State in the national championship game.
- Quarterback Tuck Woolum and receiver Steve Bird led a veteran team into the 1982 season. They were determined not to be denied again, and they weren’t. The Colonels completed a 13-0 record by winning their second national title, 17-14 over Delaware.
Every year since then, with the notable exception of last year, fall Saturdays have brought eight or nine or more victories and/or playoff appearances to Roy Kidd and Eastern Kentucky.
Always, the emphasis is on fundamental football. Turnovers and penalties are few, gimmicks even fewer.
Dave Roberts, a former Kidd assistant who now is the head coach at Baylor University, said, “Look, you know what they’re going to do. They do pretty much the same thing every year. But that doesn’t make it any easier. They just line up and beat you.”
Tim Stowers, the head coach at 1-AA power Georgia Southern, said, “Coach Kidd believes in blocking and tackling. His defense says, Here we are, block us if you can. His offense says, Here we come, stop us if you can. Not many people block them, and not many people stop them.”
Coach Kidd pleads guilty. “We try to keep the game from being too complicated,” he said.  “Some of the people we play try to do too much, and that leads to mistakes. I believe that your kids should know what they are supposed to do, so they can execute on the field. If you’re going to beat me, I want my kids to know what they are doing. We want to make it possible for them to win.”
There is no doubt that it works. His 272 victories at Eastern (326 wins overall as a head coach) rank Kidd sixth all time among Division I coaches and third all time for victories at one school.
The Colonels have compiled some impressive records as well. In the 19-year history of Division I-AA, EKU’s 180 wins are comfortably ahead of all others in the 90-team division--20 more than second-place Delaware.
EKU has appeared in the I-AA playoffs five more times than any other school, and played in more playoff games (30) than any other.
Along the way, there have been opportunities for Roy Kidd to finish his career at a bigger school, earning more money. But he hasn’t been interested enough to accept the offers.
“Roy is one of the best coaches in the history of the sport, and he could have gone other places,” said David Cawood, a former Kidd aide and former assistant executive director of the NCAA. “But he has a comfort level at Eastern, and he has his ego in check. He already has what’s important to him.”
What’s most important to Coach Kidd is his family. He and his wife, Sue, have three children--Marc, Keith and Kathy--and five grandchildren: Seth Kidd (10), Samantha Kidd (7), Evan Kuhl (8), Nicholas Kuhl (4), Kirsten Kuhl (2) and Kody Kidd (four months).
“I have a lot of roots here,” said the coach. “This is my home. It’s Sue’s home; it’s our family’s home. This is my school. I played here. I really love this place. And I really love the kids we have at Eastern, and the friends we’ve made over the years.”
Those years have not dimmed the competitive fire that drives Roy Kidd. He’s not a good loser, and freely admits it.
He loves to coach, and he still looks forward to the work winning requires--the seven-day weeks, the countless hours of watching film, being available when a current or former player needs him.
For all the success, the victories, the championships, the indescribable satisfaction he derives from seeing so many of his former players doing so well in their lives...for all of that, Coach Kidd is a man who is not very content.
“Last year bothered me a lot,” he said this summer, just before the players were to report for the 1997 season. “There were two or three games that we lost and should have won. We lost two games to a field goal on the last play of the game.
“We’re not used to having that happen, although I know that it was the toughest schedule we’ve ever had. But we’ve always had challenging schedules. I thought that we needed to work a little harder, and we needed to work together better. We needed to make some changes.”
The coach said his staff and players had responded well to the challenge of putting 1996 behind them. “We had a really good spring practice,” he said. “We made some progress.”
As fall practice began, Coach Kidd said of this next Eastern Kentucky team, “We’re going to be more aggressive. Offensively, we may open it up a little. Defensively, we may apply a little more pressure.”
Coach Kidd mentioned the team’s receivers and its secondary when asked to pinpoint the team’s strengths. He is worried about the lack of depth, the need for some incoming freshmen to step up and provide depth, potential weaknesses in the defensive line and the relative inexperience at quarterback.
But he likes the young men who will accept those challenges, and he appreciates the hard work of his staff as they prepared for the season. He is approaching the 1997 season with optimism and determination.
As the season unfolds, the tradition he has built at EKU will be very evident. The 1967 Grantland Rice Bowl team, the first championship team of the Roy Kidd era, will be in for a 30th reunion. The undefeated, 1982 national champions will be back for their 15th reunion.
And along the way, there will be plenty of former players to remind the current group what it has meant to them to play for, and learn from, Coach Roy Kidd.
Said Robyn Hatley, the pediatric surgeon: “He has given a lot of people a chance that they probably would not have had other places. He believes in you. He is a gentleman, and he is a good man.”
Said Wayne Bowlin, the teacher and principal: “I tried to tell him once what he had meant to me, how he was so important in my life. He told me to do the same things for kids who, like me 40 years ago, needed help.”
Said Jim Demler, the urologist: “He changed my life. He believed in me unequivocally, and he gave me a chance when others wouldn’t. I’ll never be able to repay him for all the things he did for me, for making me a better person.”
Said Wally Chambers, the seven-year NFL veteran: “I was a fat kid who no big college wanted. I’d never been pushed. Coach Kidd and his staff saw in me more than I knew I had, and they taught me and pushed me to become as good as I could be.”
Said Jim Guice, the transportation executive: “He has been very consistent through the years about his players’ character and self-pride. With Coach Kidd, what you see is what you get. There are no hidden agendas. I consider him a lifelong friend.”