Report: Jerry Kill finds 7th college football job since leaving Gophers in 2015

Kill was most recently the head coach at New Mexico State.

Former Gophers football coach Jerry Kill is expected to be hired at Vanderbilt for an off-field consulting role, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel.

Kill, who coached the Gophers from 2011-15 before stepping down midseason in 2015 due to health issues, was most recently the head coach at New Mexico State, where he quickly turned the program around. Under Kill, the Aggies won just their second bowl game since 1960 in 2022 — a 24-19 victory over Bowling Green.

This season, Kill’s Aggies went 10-5 and went to the New Mexico Bowl, which they lost 37-10 to Fresno State on Dec. 16. After the game, Kill went on a long rant and said that New Mexico athletic director Eddie Nunez tried to keep the Aggies from using the Lobos’ indoor practice facility over an incident involving his team’s quarterback, Diego Pavia, who allegedly urinated on the logo at midfield at the practice facility during a visit to his hometown of Albuquerque, N.M., before the start of the season.

Kill stepped down as coach at New Mexico State on Dec. 23, however, it did not appear to be related to his rant after the New Mexico Bowl. According to KOAT-TV in Albuquerque, New Mexico State athletic director Mario Moccia wanted Kill to return and offered him a contract that would have paid him $1.1 million per year through the remaining three years of his deal.

It would have been the largest contract in the history of Aggies athletics. 

Since leaving the University of Minnesota in 2015, Kill has been an assistant coach at Rutgers (2017), Virginia Tech (2019) and TCU (2020-21). He was also the interim head coach at TCU (2021) before taking the head coaching job at New Mexico State . Additionally, Kill was the associate athletic director at Kansas State in 2016 and the AD at Southern Illinois in 2018 and 2019.