Asked if he did kickoffs as well as placekicks at UH, Kelly said:
"I did field goals and PATs as well as kickoffs. I did the trio." (RPE)
Asked if he leaned on the holder and snapper as kind of a support group or a team within a team, Kelly said:
"No. My freshmen and sophomore years, Kurt Milne was the punter, and I really clicked with him. He and I got along really well. The next guy who came in, Tim Grasso, he was more of a football savvy guy. He didn't play soccer. He was a receiver in high school, all-everything ... Him and Jake Ingram, who's actually the long snapper for the New England Patriots now, those guys clicked. They were football guys. I wasn't. I never tried to make anyone think I was a football guy. I didn't watch Monday Night Football. I didn't watch football on Sundays. I didn't watch college football. Tell you the truth, I can't even tell you I watched professional soccer. I'm just not a TV guy. I'm just a homebody who likes to hang out with his family and hang out with his girl, and that's all I like to do." (RPE)
About how he never needed the camaraderie or support from his teammates and the only Warrior player who has returned a phone call from him has been Colt, Kelly said:
"I never needed the support of my teammates. I never needed that camaraderie. I enjoyed it when I got it, but I never needed it, so I never really connected with Tim or with Jake. I'll be lucky if I can get either one of them to return a phone call nowadays. Actually, surprisingly enough, the only guy who has returned a phone call from me is Colt Brennan - Heisman Trophy candidate, and now he's with the Redskins. He's the only guy I ever talked to who actually asked me how I was doing, which was a real surprise. And he's the one who has the most accolades of anyone." (RPE)
About how he didn't fit in with his teammates, Kelly said:
"I'm not a football player, bottom line, and I don't mesh well with football players. It just doesn't work that way. I'm a soccer player." (RPE)
About being in a high pressure situation at UH with a program that is the pro team for the whole state, Kelly said:
"There was a lot. We were the pro team. And just like ... it's not even close to Cal Baptist. Cal Baptist is very low key. I can go to Taco Bell here, right across the street, and nobody will know who I am. I'd go across the street to Burger King or L and L Grill, and all of a sudden I'm getting asked for autographs and people want to take pictures with me. Any time I went to a club ... in Hawaii, I got hooked up. Any time you wanted to go to a club, we would go, and people would know who we were. At Hawaii we were allowed to drink. And we were very careful not to drink where someone was taking pictures, because we were in the public eye." (RPE)
About having to worry about being photographed with a cup of alcohol when they were out in the public, Kelly said:
"Oh, yeah. And it got to the point where the big-time guys - me, Colt, a couple of the receivers, we would ask for a cup and just pour our drink into a cup instead of drinking it out of the bottle. If it's in a bottle, people know you're drinking. And then it got to the point where we really had to look at ourselves and say, 'Well, we are role models.' ... Colt and I basically stopped going out. I stopped going out my junior year, the year we went to the Sugar Bowl, because we didn't want to deal with the bad press. We were focused on the team that year." (RPE)
Praising the loyal fans of Hawaii, Kelly said:
"But by the same token, I'll tell you one thing: There are just thousands upon thousands of fans that just bleed green there. You cannot find a bunch of crazier fans than Hawaii. The people there were just absolutely beautiful. They took care of the players, they loved the players, they were really compassionate about the players. Even when you did bad ... there's always fans that are going to hassle you, your own fans, but most of the time they were very loyal. Extremely loyal. And to this day I'm still friends with a lot of fans, people that have no relevance to the football program directly, but are just diehard fans. I still talk to them. I'm still connected with them online.
Hawaii is a whole different country. It really is. Yeah, they're part of the union, and all that kind of stuff ... I really miss the people there. It really is the aloha spirit over there." (RPE)
Asked how his Mom is doing, Kelly said:
"She's doing very well. She's basically a stay-at-home mom. There aren't really any kids to stay at home for any more. I'm one of six kids and basically everyone's out. But it came to the point with her illness, MS, and her struggle to beat it, it got to the point where I was missing out on too much, and I didn't want to be away from my family any more. I told Coach Jorden, I didn't want to live at Cal Baptist. I'd kind of like to live at home and commute. I'd like to spend more time with my family. I'd like to see them every day when I go home." (RPE)
About how Coach McMackin was unhappy that he wanted to be near his Mom instead of finishing his degree at UH, Kelly said:
"I got a lot of flak from Hawaii, especially the head coach, Greg McMackin, about not coming back and finishing my degree over there." (RPE)
Asked how close he is to getting his degree, Kelly said:
"About 21 units. I came here and I'm about 46 units away because I have to do all the general education stuff, like the New Testament Surveys and all that stuff. I call 'em the God classes, which I love. I went to a Christian high school, and I love doing that kind of stuff. That kind of stuff was never an issue. I have three semesters to do it, so I've got plenty of time. But I got a lot of flak for not returning and finishing my degree." (RPE)
About how Coach McMackin didn't care about his situation with his Mother's health...and how Mac changed when he became head coach and he stopped calling him coach, Kelly said:
"He didn't care. Unless it goes right to the football thing, he didn't care. It got to the point where I don't even call him Coach anymore. I just call him Greg when we talk. I stopped calling him Coach a long time ago because he stopped being a coach a long time ago to me. When he was the defensive coordinator he was a really nice guy, really a pleasure to be around, just a real genuinely loving guy. And he got the head coaching job and things changed.
I had a bad season my senior year, I didn't play as well as I needed to, but for some reason the relationship between me and him died. That did weigh into my decision of not coming back, but the final factor, the big factor, was my Mom and my family. I wanted to come home.
He couldn't wrap his head around that. It's a business." (RPE)
Asked if his Mom's health is good now, Kelly said:
"Her health is very good. She's doing well. She's still doing treatment. She's not doing the steroid route, which is nice, because when she did do that originally when she was first diagnosed, it was
tough on the family because of the mood swings and all that stuff. Steroids do weird things to your body ... She's on this all natural stuff now, where it's all vitamins. Instead of steroids helping you recover from the episodes, this that she's on now is preventing the episodes from ever happening. I don't think she's had an episode for a few years now, a real serious one. But she's one tough bird. That lady, she can be feeling inches from death and she wouldn't say anything, because she's not a complainer. So that's nice." (RPE)
Asked when his Mom was diagnosed with MS, Kelly said:
"I think my junior year in high school. It's been a good few years." (RPE)
About how he decided to walk on to UH and how he looked forward to the end of his Warrior career so that he could move closer to his parents, Kelly said:
"I'll give you the quick version ... I left for Hawaii not on scholarship. I walked on my first semester. By the time I was recruited it was already the middle of basketball season, and all the scholarships were gone by then. So they said, you can come over and earn your scholarship. OK, I'll earn my scholarship. I played the first semester and wound up earning my scholarship.
When I left for Hawaii, my parents and I were not on good terms. We had a falling out. I moved out of the house. It was my 'rebellious stage' of my life. It happens to everyone ... I moved out of my house. I wound up living with my girlfriend for a while. It was a decision I look back on wishing I hadn't made it, but like anything else you learn from your mistakes and you move on.
I didn't move out of my house to go to Hawaii, I moved out of my girlfriend's house to go to Hawaii. Fortunately, when I left my mom and dad still wanted to help pay for the school. They paid for the first semester, and after the first semester that's when I got my scholarship.
By the start of my junior year was really when my mom and my dad and I rekindled our family and our relationship. And that's when me missing home and me wanting to be home with my family really started to hit. Before, I was happy to be out. I was glad to be out.
And as things went on, my mom and dad kind of started talking and all that stuff, and rekindling that relationship. That's when I was like, 'These four years need to be done.' I want to get this thing done. I want to go home. I want to go back to the Mainland. At least on the Mainland I'm a two-hour flight away, not a five-hour plane flight and $550 for one trip, which is just ridiculous.
My junior year is when that all started to kick in. So that's how that all started to work out." (RPE)
About how he cannot remember what was said during games in their Sugar Bowl year but he remembers the togetherness they had off the field, Kelly said:
"That was the big year. We went 12-0. And I can't tell you one thing that was said. I can't tell you what I was thinking. I made big kicks that year. I made huge kicks that year, the kicks of my career. I can't remember one thing that was said on the sideline. I can't remember one thing that was said in the locker room. I can't remember one thing we did.
I can tell you stories upon stories about the plane flights, stupid stories about people saying dumb stuff and not thinking because they're tired, or guys getting hurt and they're on pain-killers and saying dumb things. Or people just running around beating on each other with pillows. I can tell you story after story about various things we did as a team. And that's what made that special for the rest of us, the camaraderie." (RPE)
About how he hung out with Colt and Ryan Mouton during the Sugar Bowl year, the only time he felt included with the team, Kelly said:
"All of the (other) three years I was there, it was like the quarterback was here, and the running backs here, (on) the totem pole, and the kickers were at the bottom. That year was the only year where I hung out with Colt. I hung out with our starting safety, which was Ryan Mouton at the time. Us three, I remember going and hanging out together on a road trip. They didn't look at me as a kicker, they looked at me as a teammate. And that's what made that season so special. There was no hierarchy. They were just teammates." (RPE)
About how Colt would be the same wonderful person whether or not they won, and how their Sugar Bowl season was made on the friendships between teammates, Kelly said:
"Yeah. I'll tell you one thing, though: With Colt, we could have lost all 12 games and he would have been that way, I think, because you see the kind of thing he's going through. He's had two hip surgeries now. He's still roughing it out, still fighting to stay third string at the Redskins. He's still as nice and as kind a person as the day I met him. But it does help, absolutely. The winning does help. It keeps your morale up. But that season was made on the friendships between teammates, not the wins and the losses." (RPE)
http://blogs.pe.com/collegesports/2009/09/kelly-hawaii-fans-great-but-th.html
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