Berea, Ohio (92.3 The Fan) – If you haven’t learned by now, with Freddie Kitchens, what you see is what you get.
Kitchens’ straight forward, blunt and sometimes hilarious honesty has been a breath of fresh air since he was elevated to head coach in January.
That candor is also what prompted a career change in 1999 that ultimately led him to Cleveland.
“I was just not happy. I was just kind of living life and was not happy, internal happiness, per se,” Kitchens said. “I saw where the Auburn offensive line coach got the head coaching job at Glenville State College. His name was Rick Trickett. I called him. He said I can’t pay you anything, I can give you either $500 either all at once or a $125 a month. I said, ‘I am going to need it all at once.’ Two days later, I was up there. I went in and quit at the car dealership and ended up there. Ever since, I knew that I wanted to coach.”
Kitchens quit a full-time job in Tuscaloosa, Alabama where he was salesman of the month two out of the three months he was employed at a dealership selling cars. He was apparently really good at it, yet he walked away.
“I do not remember exactly [how many cars I sold], but I know that I was making enough money that my girlfriend at the time, which is my wife now, her and I could go out to eat dinner every night,” Kitchens said. “That was plenty. That was more than I ever had before.”
So, what caused Kitchens to quit?
Honesty.
“I like just being straight up and honest with people,” Kitchens said. “You have to be able to call bull [crap] on some of it. I will just leave it at that. I would like to like tell you I would not buy this car for this much, here is what we can give it to you for but then you do not make any money so you are kind of torn.”
When Kitchens speaks, you just never know where the conversation will lead, and Monday’s post practice presser was no exception. It ranged from the typical post practice and post preseason game questions to getting into coaching, encyclopedias and even his favorite wrestling move.
Kitchens related selling cars to another profession – one that has died thanks to the invention of the internet.
“I do not think they do it anymore, but they used to sell encyclopedias. They would walk around and sell encyclopedias,” Kitchens recalled. “You always thought that the price that they gave you is what you paid for. I never knew you could haggle on the price. Then the internet hit, and now encyclopedias is it. Found a great set right before we left to come here from Arizona. We found a great full set at an antique shop. We bought it. It was from 1984, though, Think about that. From 1984, a set of encyclopedias but it is very interesting to read still and see how things have changed.”
While he pursued his dream to coach, Kitchens’ wife remained in Tuscaloosa, where she taught.
That first job for Kitchens was hardly what dreams are made of.
“I was washing laundry, picking up rocks on the field and doing really everything,” Kitchens said. “That was Division II football, so we did not have a grounds crew.
“When it came to the football field, I was coaching running backs and tight ends.”
The following year Kitchens served as a graduate assistant at LSU. Stops at North Texas and Mississippi State as a tight ends and running backs coach followed before he joined the Dallas Cowboys in 2006 as their tight ends coach.
And as they say, the rest is history.
