InkBlog

Kerwin Bell still carries skin-tingling memories from quarterbacking Florida to the 1984 Southeastern Conference title and still owns that season’s championship ring, neither of which NCAA probation could strip away. The folksiest of Gators folk heroes, he spent 13 years chasing pro dreams across the NFL, CFL and the World Football League and is now entering his third decade of coaching.

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He built a high school football powerhouse from scratch in Ocala, won the only two league titles in Jacksonville University’s 22-year FCS run, and steered undefeated Valdosta State to a Division II national crown. Along the way, Bell twice came close to joining the staff at his alma mater. After the 2011 season, ex-Gators coach Will Muschamp considered Bell as a replacement for offensive coordinator Charlie Weis but ultimately gave the job to Brent Pease. Then in January 2020 Bell had discussions with Gators coach Dan Mullen and defensive coordinator Todd Grantham about coming aboard as a senior analyst, a position that didn’t materialize.

His lone season as an FBS coordinator came in 2019 at South Florida, where he had the misfortune of joining the tail end of Charlie Strong’s tenure. The Bulls ranked 112th or worse that season in FBS scoring, passing and total offense — an anomaly compared to the potent production of Bell’s teams at lower levels. 

In April, at age 55, he was tabbed as the 13th head coach at Western Carolina, where only one of the coaches preceding him managed a winning record. It seems like a challenging rebuild, but “The Throwin’ Mayoan” has overcome drastic odds before. Bell joined The Athletic this week for a bumper-to-bumper conversation about his new job, his humble beginnings as an eighth-string walk-on at Florida — a tale that never gets old — and how FSU’s Bobby Bowden came to regret not offering him a scholarship.

After COVID-19 struck last year and the analyst job at Florida fizzled, you were back at your lake house in Valdosta, right? Since you weren’t actively coaching for the first time in 20 years, did you spend the fall studying games and trying to stay sharp?

Bell: I drove around to see some other people, like Gene Chizik, who’s a good friend of mine over in Auburn about three hours away. We talked ball. I worked on my playbook. Watched a lot of film of different people and got some ideas about how to improve it. 

I also started working out and lost 50 pounds, got down to 240. I’m at the age where I need to get in really good shape, and I did. 

The conversations you had with Muschamp in January 2012 — you were a serious contender to become Florida’s offensive coordinator. What transpired there?

Bell: I was real excited about having the opportunity because Will is a great coach with what he brings to the table defensively. He wanted to interview and I think he was recruiting when he flew into Jacksonville to meet me. It was a long interview, probably three hours, and I felt very good about what was presented. We did some board work and talked philosophically about what I wanted to do as an OC, really getting into the playbook and seeing exactly what we do to attack people. But as with any big-time interview, he talked to other people and had other options. I would’ve loved to have seen what we could’ve done there together.

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Before we reflect on that magical 1984 season that essentially came out of nowhere, let’s remind the younger readers exactly where “nowhere” was. Coming out of tiny Mayo (Fla.) in 1983 you had the cool nickname but zero scholarship offers. None. So you walked on at Florida with, let’s say, minimal expectations. 

Bell: I remember walking in the locker room and they have the roster posted. There were eight quarterbacks and I was No. 8. That’s very traumatic, and you’re asking yourself what are you here for?

I went down there and didn’t think I’d play until my third or fourth year, so I was looking at the reality. Just told myself to keep working and I’d probably have a chance.

That redshirt year must have been brutal for a scout-team quarterback who was at the bottom of the depth chart and the bottom of the pile.

Bell: We had some really tough guys on defense, like Wilbur Marshall, and they made it hard on you. Every Tuesday in full pads you got beat up at practice. You were Alabama’s quarterback or Florida State’s quarterback, so they’d hit you late. The coaches would get on ’em but they didn’t care, they’d still hit you. They didn’t care if I got hurt or not because I wasn’t gonna see the field on Saturday. It was a tough fall. I was ready to go home a lot. 

But we had these Monday night scrimmages for the guys who didn’t play — we called them Monday Night Football — and I seemed to always do well in those. It gave me a lot of hope. Mike Shanahan was our offensive coordinator that season, before going to the Denver Broncos, and he actually told someone he thought I’d be the next quarterback even though I was just a walk-on. 

The next spring, our new OC was Galen Hall and he told me before the spring game that I was only gonna get one series. So on that one series, we went 80 yards and I threw a touchdown.

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While that caught head coach Charlie Pell’s attention, he obviously had no idea he had the SEC Player of the Year on his hands. You were still something like fifth-string entering the summer of 1984, with four scholarship quarterbacks slotted ahead of you. One was ruled academically ineligible and you wound up competing against senior Dale Dorminey for the starting job.

Bell: Yeah, the week before the season opener against Miami, coach Pell told me I had graded out second-highest to Dale so I’d be the No. 2 guy. There wasn’t a scholarship left, so I’d have to wait until the next January, but I was excited just to be the backup, especially after being eighth-string a year before.

Turns out you were the backup for less than 24 hours, with Dorminey being injured at the end of Monday’s practice.

Bell: We had about five minutes to go, and it was a non-contact period, just running through plays. Dale was running it into the end zone, you know, with the fullback sorta leading him. Then somebody tripped the fullback and he fell into Dale’s knee. Dale got up and walked off the field, so we weren’t sure if it was serious, but I got to jump into the No. 1 huddle.

I got to the dining hall later that night and coach Hall tells me that Dale’s got an ACL and he’ll miss the whole year. That’s how I found out I was starting against the defending national champions Miami as a redshirt freshman. I was so scared to death I couldn’t eat. Gave my plate of food to someone else and went to watch film and pray.  

Miami needed Bernie Kosar’s touchdown pass with 7 seconds left and a pick six as time expired to win 32-20. During Week 2, you tied LSU 21-21. So you’re sitting there unranked at 0-1-1 with all the NCAA sanctions heating up. After beating Tulane the following week, Pell was fired. Nothing forewarned that Florida was about to win out, go 9-1-1 to claim its first SEC championship.

Bell: We took an us-against-the-world mentality because it seemed like everything was coming down on us — with them firing coach Pell and talking about probation.

Flying back in from Kentucky after we had clinched the SEC, the pilot flew us over the stadium and there was like 40,000 people down there waiting. Then we drive into Gainesville with the motorcade and there’s people all in the streets. There’s old men crying. That memory lasts the rest of your life.

So does the memory of you limping off the bench for that 1986 comeback against No. 5 Auburn. From 17 points down in the fourth quarter to pulling out an 18-17 thriller. 

Bell: We were 9-1-1 two years in a row and then we lost all that talent that went to the NFL. And because we were on probation, we didn’t replace that talent, so in ’86 we had fallen off.

At one point we lost four in a row and I hurt my knee against LSU. We had six more games to the season, and they thought I’d be out for six weeks. But I was determined to get back for that Auburn game in four weeks, even though the doctor didn’t think there was any way.

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I begged into Monday practice that week and the trainer said “OK, let’s see if you can do it.” I didn’t want to let them know it was hurting me but I was about to cry, and even though I tried not to limp they could tell it was still bothering me. So coach Hall said, “We’ll dress ya but we’re not going to play you unless it’s an emergency.”

Auburn had Aundray Bruce and Tracy Rocker and they were dominating. Our quarterback (Rodney Brewer) had like four turnovers in the first half, but it wasn’t like he was just turning it over — they were killing him. Watching it from the sideline, it was sorta scary. Then another backup QB, Pepe Lescano, told me he heard the coaches saying they might put me in the game. I was thinking, “I don’t know if I want to go out there.”

With 36 seconds left, you wound up hitting Ricky Nattiel, who was playing with a badly separated shoulder, for a 5-yard touchdown to pull within 17-16. Then you scrambled in for the two-point try, proving that one good knee was enough. 

Bell: I did not feel comfortable at all. I was really throwing off one leg and I had a big brace on.

After the touchdown, I was just thinking we were going to tie it up. I mean, my gosh, we were just down 17-nothing. So I headed off the field. But Coach Hall told me to stay on because we were going for two.

The two-point play was an option route for Ricky again and this time he was covered. So there was nothing to do but run it. They say it took me five minutes to get to the end zone.

Everybody talks about me in that game, but our defense kept us in it. We had like six or seven turnovers, many of them on our side of the field.

The hometown love story of your middle school sweetheart, Cosette, becoming your wife is pure Americana. She was a majorette at Florida and had to be thrilled that you beat FSU three times as a starter.

Bell: Well there were only 49 people in our high school graduating class, so she didn’t have a lot to pick from.

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Growing up on a farm, my family didn’t go to college games and we didn’t have a lot of TV games back then before cable. I liked the Seminoles because they were really good at that time, and Cosette would get mad at me for saying I was a Seminoles fan. Of course, she was a big Gator, because her dad was a booster and they went to all the games. So she started pushing me to go to Gainesville with her.

I actually wrote coach Bowden a letter about getting a scholarship, and nothing came of it, so every time we’d play each other he’d say, “Dagum, Bell, I should’ve given you a scholarship!” And since then he’s been really helpful in recommending me for coaching jobs.

As a pro quarterback, you had stints as a Dolphin, Falcon, Buccaneer, Colt, Eskimo, Argonaut, Blue Bomber and a Gold Miner. From that hodgepodge of schemes, what most shaped your offensive philosophy?

Bell: I was in 11 different offenses over 13 teams in my professional career, which tells you how many times I got cut. 

I was with the Indianapolis Colts (1996-97) under Lindy Infante, and it’s really his system that we’ve changed to fit for our college teams. The verbiage in the NFL is really long so we’ve cut that way down for college to be able to go fast. Lindy was just brilliant, one of the sharpest guys I’ve ever been around. His system is really sound and I’m a “system” guy, where if you say something it means something.

And I was a grad assistant at Florida under Steve Spurrier in 1990 — after I tore my ACL in the offseason playing pickup basketball. The Bucs cut me and I went back to Gainesville to have reconstructive knee surgery and became a GA on Spurrier’s staff. Learning under him was the reason I wanted to become a coach. I went through high school and went through college and never thought one time about being a coach. But seeing the precision of the routes and the spacing that Spurrier taught, that was almost perfection on the field. The way we coach it with quarterbacks and receivers now as far as spacing, timing and rhythm, a lot of that comes from Steve Spurrier. 

It’s a system that I believe in, and I know where the negatives and the positives are, where people tried to attack us all those different years. And we have answers because we’ve been in the system so long. I don’t say my system is any better than anyone else’s, but I know it inside-out and I know what makes it good. It’s about knowing the intricate things that will make it great because we all run the same stuff. The question is can we coach it to the point where we make it great?

You handed over the play calling to your oldest son Kade during the 2018 championship season at Valdosta State. Now, you’ve brought him aboard as your offensive coordinator at Western Carolina. What’s his age 28?

Bell: We’re a lot alike, we’re stubborn, and we both probably think we know more than what we do. He’s passionate and loves this game — he reminds me a lot of myself, but he might be worse than I am. Football is 24/7 with him. He doesn’t stop. He’s always recruiting or seeing whether there’s some players in the portal. 

Offensively, he took the system I built over 20 years and he’s added to it. Sometimes I don’t like the stuff he adds and we get into arguments a little bit before we come to an agreement. He really studies NFL stuff and big-time programs stuff. He’s added some stuff that’s gonna help us. I tell him all the time I’ve just got to learn to grow a little bit. I’ve got to not be so old-school, that I’ve got to evolve.

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When I started letting him call plays one spring at Valdosta State, I noticed that he’s aggressive, that he takes shots and knows how to set things up. He thinks the same way I do.

I called plays for 12 years as a head coach on the college level. It was a lot of hard work and I’d sleep at the office. You’re doing all your head coaching duties during the day and then I’d do my game planning at night after everyone had left.

Having Kade as OC takes a lot off my plate. I was so involved in play calling all those years I never realized how much I was taken away from the rest of the team during games. He just gives me a chance to be a better head coach. 

Amid the jawdropping mountainscapes, Western Carolina has gone 7-25 the past three years. Its last playoff berth was 1983, the season you were a redshirt freshman at Florida. How do you construct a winner there? 

Bell: We’ve got to recruit talented players to come here and stay here. When you bring players on this campus, they see it’s a beautiful place. There’s not a lot of places that compare. We’ve got to build a culture where they want to stay. They’ve got to come here and graduate. You’ve got to play with a lot of juniors and seniors on your roster to be successful. 

All us coaches, we all want to say that we can build a culture. You’ve got to say that if you want to get hired by anybody, right? You’ve got to go in and change all those things that make a successful program. But I think there’s certain people that God has blessed with the ability to do that. Certain people have the leadership quality and that ability to walk in a room and change people’s mindsets. I’ve been blessed to do that. Everywhere I’ve been we built a culture of winning, and I think it comes back to who I am. I’m a guy who tries to tell you the truth. Kids have gotta trust you nowadays. They’ve got to believe in you. As coaches, we tell kids, “We’ve got to trust you to play you.” And I think they’ve got to trust us also.

I want players to feel like they’re getting pushed harder than any other place in the country. From the strength coach to academics to the training room rehabbing injuries. I want them to feel that we’re pushing them not because we’re trying to be A-holes, right? We’re doing it because we have an investment in you and we want to see you be the best person and player you can be. Then guess what? The players see they’re being pushed because the coaches care about us. You’ve got to make them feel like they’re a part of a family. 

We’ll build this thing the right way, and I think everybody will be proud of what we do. I know we can build a program that’s solid for the next few years. You’ve gotta build a championship program in your building first before you worry about winning championships on the field. I have no doubt we’re going to win championships. I know how to do it and we’ll do it again.

(Top photo: Ashley Evans / WCU Public Relations)

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