The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1525890
48 ■ THE WOLFPACKER PACK PAST BY TIM PEELER T he lasting image many NC State fans have of former Wolfpack football coach Monte Kiffin is of him wearing a red-and-white Lone Ranger outfit as he rode onto campus on a white horse for a pregame pep rally during his first season as head coach. It was one of many outlandish stunts the former Nebraska football player and assistant coach used to attract atten- tion to an ACC-championship program that he inherited from previous coach Bo Rein. Maybe it's fitting, then, that his old- est son, Lane, remembered his father as a man of gigantic proportions. "There are very few superheroes and very few great ones that loved everyone and tried to help everyone they came in touch with forever," the younger Kiffin said shortly after his father's death on July 11 at the age of 84. "Whether you were big or small, wherever you were, he tried to help." Lane Kiffin, who sat on top of the horse with his father on that day back in 1980 as it prepared to leave Mission Valley Shopping Center, followed in his father's hoofprints as a coach. He's been all over both the NFL and college foot- ball, just like his father, but mostly as a head coach for the Oakland Raiders, Tennessee, Southern California, Florida Atlantic and Mississippi. At many of those stops, he hired his father as either defensive coordinator or defensive consultant. A Unique Character Monte Kiffin had just one head coach- ing position, at NC State from 1980-82. He compiled a 16-17 overall record and an 8-10 ACC mark that appears to be the very definition of mediocre in the record books. Yet Kiffin was intent on starting a program that could build on the suc- cess of Lou Holtz, who first hired him from Nebraska as an assistant coach at Arkansas, and Rein, the tragic figure in Wolfpack football history who coached for four years, won the 1979 ACC title, was hired away by LSU and died in a plane crash before he ever coached a game in Baton Rouge. If nothing else, Kiffin was one of the most memorable coaches in Wolfpack football history, as evidenced by dozens of fond memories he left behind from a three-year head coaching tenure that ended more than four decades ago. "I've got a little Lou Holtz, a little Bo His Time In Raleigh Was As Colorful As It Was Brief, But Monte Kiffin Was More Than A Showman Kiffin went 16-17 in three seasons at NC State. It was the only head coaching stop of his long career, but he went on to enjoy success as a defensive coordinator in the NFL. PHOTO COURTESY NC STATE ATHLETICS