Kelley’s unconventionalism headed to Clinton
CLINTON, S.C. (BVM) — When Kevin Kelley took over the Pulaski Academy (Ark.) football team 18 years ago, the team had never won a championship and had only been to the semifinals twice. When Kelley departed for Presbyterian College in May, the Bruins were nine-time state champions, going 216-29-1 during that stretch.
Kelley, the engineer behind the operation, had built one of the most historic reputations for a high school football coach across the country, and he did it very unconventionally. Kelley was known nationwide as “the coach that never punts and onside kicks.” Yes, regardless of field position and score, the now-FCS Division I head coach was probably going to go for it on fourth down. Then when he scored on you, he was probably going to try to get it back with an onside kick.
“When I got the job, the job surprised me. I was the offensive coordinator and I didn’t know the head coach wasn’t going to be the head coach,” Kelley said. “I went back and was surprised … how am I gonna be better than the last guy? I got to the on-field questions, was looking for answers, found a little research about this guy who had done some research on field position and concluded it wasn’t important. I bought into that.”
The unorthodox method of football paid off as his teams racked up win after win and trophy after trophy for 18 years. Colleges came calling to Kelley, trying to lure him away from Pulaski for their head coaching jobs. From small FBS schools to FCS schools, he had heard from them all. But they weren’t interested in having him come there to carry out what had made him so successful in the past. If he were to take their jobs, the onside kicks and fourth down attempts would come to an end.
So Kelley held out for the right opportunity which came in the form of the Presbyterian College Blue Hose. Rob Acunto, athletic director at Presbyterian, made a pitch that was music to Kelley’s ears.
“I talked to several guys about FCS and even small FBS jobs before and I get to the point in the conversation where I tell them, ‘what’re you gonna do when I do something off the wall like onside kick in the first quarter or go for it in the first when its fourth-and-5 on my own 25-yard line?’ And the media starts coming at you and asking you questions like, ‘do you wish you wouldn’t hire this guy?’” Kelley said. “They’d say, ‘well, we hope you don’t do that.’ But Rob did it. He said, ‘it’s my job to help facilitate all the sports, not tell you how to coach your game.’”
With people behind him who would allow for his innovation to continue, Kelley made the hard call to finally leave Pulaski. Having built a program from the ground up and watched it turn to a perennial power, he was in his comfort zone. He was rightfully proud of what he had achieved and didn’t like the thought of that all crumbling. However, being a college football head coach was the next step in his advancement.
“It was the single hardest decision I’ve ever had to make,” Kelley said. “I keep saying that and people say, ‘what about marriage or having kids?’ I’m like those are easy decisions, this was a hard decision.”
With that decision now cemented in stone, Kelley becomes the 16th head coach in Presbyterian football history and takes over a team that hadn’t had a winning season since 2014 before they ended that cold spell this spring. His work is cut out for him, but he’s exactly the guy for the job.
One familiar name in football, New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, would probably agree. In December of 2020, the coaching legend came out in a press conference saying that Kelley is “probably the top high school coach in the country.”
“To get something like that from him, it’s extremely, extremely humbling and such an honor,” Kelley said. “It’s like ‘wow that’s incredible,’ but you have to keep doing the things that made somebody like that say that because it’s easy to look around and go ‘wow he thinks I’m great’ and forget where you’re at and what you’re doing. It’s like, slap yourself in the face and get back to work.”
That’s what Kelley has been doing since he got the job; working. He won’t be able to have his whole team assembled at once until August, so he’ll have minimal time to inject into his players his verbiage and strategy. There’s a lot of planning to be done so that when the time comes, that transition goes smoothly.
Luckily for the Blue Hose, Kelley already knows exactly how he wants things to go.
“I think the goal is ‘OK, I have to build relationships with the players to get them to buy into the program,’” Kelley said “And the object of the game is to win because it rewards the players for hard work and their buy in, and that takes care of everything else. It takes care of putting you on the map, people believing in you, fundraising for the college, anything and everything you are trying to do, it accomplishes that.”
