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Wednesday, September 23, 1998
No rest for Houston's Helton
By GARY LUNDY
Scripps Howard News Service
The man known as "The Love Coach" spent Saturday
night in front of the television watching his alma mater play
Tennessee.
It's still hot in Houston this time of year, so the air conditioning
was going strong.
Big deal, you say?
It is to Houston head coach Kim Helton. He never slept in a
room that had an air conditioner until he went to college at the
University of Florida. Never had his own bed until then, either.
What's keeping him awake at night these days, though, isn't
one of his brothers kicking him under the covers. It's his football
schedule put together by a former athletic director.
"Trust me, I didn't wake up one day and decide it would
be great to play UCLA one afternoon and go to Knoxville to play
Tennessee the next week," said Helton, whose team faces the
Vols on Saturday.
He didn't wake up and decide to be the Dr. Laura of college
football, either. Things just seem to happen to Helton.
One day in 1996, he went to a Houston radio station to do his
football show. A relationship counselor was scheduled to be host
for a call-in program the next hour. When the counselor didn't
show up, the DJ jokingly asked Helton to answer the callers' questions.
One woman phoned and said her boyfriend was cheating on her.
Helton told her to dump the guy because "they make boyfriends
every five minutes."
The phone lines lit up. He was an instant hit, and has been
giving advice to the lovelorn ever since in a weekly segment known
as "The Love Coach."
During the season, he only does the show the Fridays before
home games, so this week he'll be packing for Knoxville instead
of solving relationship problems.
The game was arranged several years ago by former Houston athletic
director Bill Carr and Tennessee AD Doug Dickey, who are good
friends and former Florida players.
Helton also played for the Gators. In fact, he was recruited
to replace Carr at center. He arrived on campus in 1966, the year
Steve Spurrier won the Heisman Trophy.
"I thought I was in utopia my first semester in college,"
Helton said.
"I was as happy as a guy could be because I had a bed
of my own. For the first time, I wasn't sleeping with my brothers.
I grew up in Gainesville, Fla., in a two-bedroom house. One bed
was for my mom and dad. Another was for my sisters. We squeezed
another bed in another area, and let me tell you, it's not a lot
of fun with sharing it with all your brothers.
There were 10 kids - eight brothers and two sisters. Their
water came from a well. The only electric light in the house was
over the kitchen table.
When Helton got away from home, he did what a lot of college
students do. He had a good time - too good.
His first report card was mailed home. His dad wasn't amused.
"The next day after that, I walked into my dorm room and
my roommate's eyes were rather large," Helton recalled. "There
stood my dad and he already had all my stuff packed.
"He put my stuff downstairs in the truck and off we went
to go back home. He drove about five blocks and we came to a stop
sign.
"Dad looked over at me, and said 'If I have to come back
after you again, son, I'm not going to stop at this sign again.
Now, get out and get your bags and go back to school.' "
C.H. Helton never had any problem out of his boy again. If
you listen to Kim a few minutes, you can see how he grew up to
be a lot like his father.
"Kids haven't changed," Helton says about today's
generation questioning authority. "They need direction and
need to be held accountable. If I call a 2 o'clock meeting, I
expect you to be sitting in the room at 10 before 2. I don't think
that's too much to ask of a $9,000 scholarship a year, do you?"
To Helton, it's that simple. His philosophy is that there are
only two choices in life: right and wrong.
It was that way when he was growing up. And it was that way
in 1978 when he says Florida made a "critical mistake"
by forcing Dickey out as head coach. Helton was offensive line
coach on Dickey's staff that year, and a guy named Spurrier coached
the quarterbacks.
"I know for a long time Steve kept the newspaper clipping
on his office wall from the day we were all let go," Helton
said. "It's a reminder of what can happen to anybody. The
fans and boosters all love you until you don't win enough games.
Then they love you less."
Sooner or later, you get dumped for somebody else.
Or to paraphrase The Love Coach's advice about boyfriends,
"they make football coaches every five minutes."
(Gary Lundy writes for The News-Sentinel in Knoxville, Tenn.)
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