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Wednesday, October 15, 1997

Houston coach mends broken hearts, Cougars program

By MIKE BASS

Scripps Howard News Service

CINCINNATI -- The Love Coach never intended to be The Love Coach, never envisioned being college football's answer to Frasier Crane, never imagined his relationship insights would attract the focus of "Good Morning America" one minute and "Extra" the next.

Are you kidding?

Until last year, Kim Helton was just Kim Helton, football coach for the University of Houston football team, expecting to answer football questions about football games such as the upcoming one Saturday against the University of Cincinnati.

But that all would change when he showed up as scheduled at Houston radio station KRBE one day to help promote his team by appearing with morning-show host Sam Malone. Helton waited his turn while a segment aired featuring callers airing their relationship problems, then he began what was supposed to be a new topic.

"But when he got on the air to promote University of Houston football," said Malone, "he said, 'First I want to tell you something. About that woman who just called, you know what I would have told her ...' Then we started talking football, and we got a call from a woman asking for his advice. By the third week, we had two or three calls.

"I teased him, saying, You're going to be 'The Love Coach now.' "

And now, every Friday morning, Helton talks a little football and then spends the rest of his segment answering calls from Houston's heavy-hearted. It is a strange fit, this 49-year-old former Florida offensive lineman and NFL offensive line coach trying to provide straight-forward, old-fashioned common sense to complete strangers.

CALLER: "Love Coach, my husband is cheating on me."

HELTON: "Do you think he's cheating on you, or do you know he's cheating on you?"

CALLER: "I know he is."

HELTON: "Dump him. Tell him if he wants someone else, then you're going to trade upward and get someone better."

Helton is the first to admit this whole Love Coach thing is very much out of character for him, which is why, he supposes, it's a hit. Malone describes him as "grumpy on the outside" but "a big teddy bear inside."

Kim Helton? Love Coach?

"In the beginning, I was embarrassed by it and very concerned about giving people you don't know advice," said Helton. "But they've done a great job making sure if someone calls with a terrible problem to forward it to a crisis center."

Helton also was worried that he would become a sideshow, embarrassing his family and sport and university. He found those concerns unwarranted.

He says Pam, his wife of more than a quarter-century, "gets a good laugh out of it," and that Tyson, his son and quarterback, "never said a word -- my kids don't come to me for advice, they go to their mom." Meanwhile, the more people talked about The Love Coach's radio program, the more people became interested in The Love Coach's football program.

Indeed, Helton has fixed more than broken hearts, inheriting a Houston program in 1993 wracked with NCAA probation, unable to hold spring practice his first year (1-9-1), featuring just 45 scholarship players in 1994 (1-10), but winning its final Southwestern Conference game against Rice in 1995 (2-9).

Last season, Helton took the Cougars to a 7-5 record, the Conference USA co-championship and the Liberty Bowl and was named the league's coach of the year.

This year, Houston has struggled to a 1-4 start, but the games all were nonconference and against name programs (Alabama, California, Pittsburgh, Minnesota and UCLA).

"We're not a bad football team," said Helton. "We just haven't proven whether we're a good one yet."

Frankly, The Love Coach hopes he can offer some encouraging words to UC counterpart Rick Minter this year after the roles were reversed last year, when the Bearcats handed Houston its only league loss.

"I told Rick he could be The Love Coach next year," said Helton. "He turned me down."

Minter said he's heard of Helton's alter ego, read about it some over the Internet, but doesn't focus on it with Helton.

"He downplays it when I talk to him personally about it," said Minter. "He doesn't want to be known for that. He probably gets into it, though. He's a meat-and-potatoes person, down-to-earth, with a dry sense of honesty and humor about him. All his answers come from some 30 years of marriage and common sense."

Helton looks at it the same way. He just tries to share his experiences, particularly questions about raising kids, since he's got two of his own plus all those players he helped rear.

He's impressed with the sincerity and openness of the callers, some in tears, and he tries to be compassionate while hitting an issue straight-on in that low and gruff voice of his.

"He doesn't have a whole wide range of emotion," said Malone. "He's not Dustin Hoffman. He'll say, "OK, sweetheart, here's what I'd do.' He just plows right throw it." CALLER: "I have two kids, and my boyfriend has two kids. He just got a job in Miami, but my kids don't want to move. I feel like I'm choosing between him and my kids. I'm worried that no matter what I do, the stress is going to split my family. What should I do?"

HELTON: "I don't make a decision like that based on what my children want. I love my kids, and they love me, but I wouldn't let them influence a decision for me because I know they're going to leave me when they're 18 or so. I'd like to think a spouse is going to be around a lot longer than that."

Already, there are Love Coach T-shirts and Love Coach banners and there could be Love Coach so-much-more to come.

"A lady in Chicago wanted to do a book, which I refused," said Helton. "I told her that after we win a lot more games, call me."

There are times Helton wishes people wanted to talk to him about football, but then he reminds himself that this whole Love Coach phenomenon gets people talking about football. It's not as though he expected the sensation this has caused.

"I'm flabbergasted," he said.

(Mike Bass writes for The Cincinnati Post.)