Roper's Background Prepared Him for Spotlight
Saturday, August 30, 2014 | Football, Scott Carter
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – The years have clouded his memory of the first time he talked seriously to his father about the life of a coach. Kurt Roper knows that he and his dad, Bobby Roper, had those discussions but his recollections bleed into one another.
But the day Roper first realized his passion for football was different than other kids his age? That's easy. It was a late April day in 1978. Roper was almost 6 and had big plans for the afternoon.
Bobby was entering his second season as defensive coordinator at Tennessee and the Vols' annual Orange and White spring game was later that day. Roper stayed home to shoot baskets while his pregnant mom, Sue, visited the doctor.
“She was going to go to the doctor and then come back and get me and take me to the game,'' Roper said this week. “I was excited as I could be. And my mom never came home.”
Instead, the doctor told Sue Roper she was ready to have a baby. She was admitted to the hospital and by the end of the day Kurt and older brother Dan had a baby brother, Zac.
Kurt still gives Zac, now special-teams coordinator and tight ends coach at Duke, a hard time over that one.
“I couldn't have been more upset,'' Kurt said. “I was so mad I missed that spring game.”
Roper (at Rice in photo, left) encountered no such issues this past April during his Florida debut at the annual Orange & Blue Debut. In the most anticipated move by Gators coach Will Muschamp following last season, Roper was hired away from Duke to replace Brent Pease as the Gators' offensive coordinator.
A longtime understudy of Duke head coach David Cutcliffe, Roper opted to spread his coaching wings and return to the SEC, where he started his career as a graduate assistant at Tennessee from 1996-98.
He later joined Cutcliffe at Ole Miss for six seasons, spent a season at Kentucky, two back at Tennessee in 2006-07, and finally the past six years at Duke, where Roper's up-tempo spread offense averaged more than 32 points per game, scored a school-record 60 touchdowns and helped the Blue Devils win a school-record 10 games in 2013.
“When I called Coach Cutcliffe about Kurt, he wasn't happy I was calling,'' Muschamp said. “But he certainly endorsed him as a football coach and as a man.”
The decision to leave Cutcliffe and branch out in pursuit of perhaps one day taking over his own program was a huge decision for Roper and his family.
His wife, Britt, is a University of North Carolina graduate and grew up in the Raleigh-Durham area. They met in the late 1990s when Britt was a local TV sports reporter for the ABC affiliate in Knoxville and Kurt was just starting his career.
“When we went to Duke we knew everybody,'' Britt Roper said. “It was almost like a big family reunion with all the people we've coached with before. Coming here we didn't really know anybody. You just hope that you fit in well and you want your husband to be happy and get along with everybody in his room.
“It's been great. We've been very fortunate in that way.”
*****
By the time Britt and Kurt married in 2002 – he was then at Ole Miss and she had moved to Memphis for a TV job -- Britt was well-versed in the Roper way. Football is what they do. The family patriarch set the benchmark high.
Bobby Roper grew up in a family of teachers and played on the 1964 Arkansas national championship team for Razorbacks coach Frank Broyles. Two of his teammates, Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson, made headlines 25 years later when they teamed to take over the Dallas Cowboys and returned America's Team to the top of the NFL within three seasons.
Bobby started his coaching career in the late 1960s as a graduate assistant at Alabama under Bear Bryant. He got his first full-time job at The Citadel in 1969, and over the next 15 years, made stops at Virginia, Iowa State, Pittsburgh, Tennessee, Oregon State and Texas A&M.
Bobby's greatest success came at Pittsburgh where in 1976 he served as Johnny Majors' defensive coordinator. The Panthers featured Heisman-winning running back Tony Dorsett and quarterback Matt Cavanaugh.
The defense wasn't too shabby, either. Pittsburgh went 11-0 during the regular season and faced Georgia and its vaunted “Junkyard Dogs” defense for the national title in the Sugar Bowl. The Panthers had more interceptions (four) than Georgia had receptions (three) on the way to a 27-3 victory.
In a newspaper account of the dominant defensive performance, Bobby Roper delivered a colorful quote to a Pittsburgh columnist.
“We're a hell of a lot better defensive football team than the 'Junkyard Dogs',” Roper said. “And they're famous.”
As Bobby developed a reputation as one of the college game's top defensive minds, he allowed Kurt to develop his own interests.
“I never really expected any of them to go into coaching,'' Bobby said this week from Fayetteville, Ark., where he is retired. “I was always interested in them in playing sports in high school and things like that, and I went to all the games I could.
(Photo at left: Dan, Zac, Kurt and Bobby, left to right)
“I don't know how they got that interested to go into coaching, because I never tried to push it on them. There are a lot of great things about being a football coach, but there's some bad things too. They just went that way and wound up coaches.”
Kurt was hooked on the game early. As a young boy in Pittsburgh, he changed his name to Tony in honor of Dorsett. He demanded his parents call him Tony if they wanted him to respond.
When Bobby followed Majors to Tennessee in 1977, Kurt's love affair for the game continued to grow. His relationship with the game never faded regardless of where life took the Ropers next.
Kurt was born in Iowa during Bobby's one-year stint as Iowa State's defensive line coach in 1972. He went to elementary school in Tennessee, part of middle school in Oregon, and split high school between Texas and Oklahoma, where the family moved in the mid-1980s after Bobby left coaching and became owner of a Chrysler dealership.
"We lived coast to coast and border to border, and I don't know if she ever knew where we were moving until we got about 30 minutes into the telephone conversation,'' Bobby said of Sue, his wife of 47 years.
The nomadic life suited Kurt just fine. As long as he had one of his dad's games to go to, what else was there?
“I don't think I could have had a better childhood,” he said. “I thought I was the lucky guy in school that everybody thought, 'wow, he gets to go out on the football field,' or 'he gets to go in the locker room after the game.' I always thought [moving] was just part of it. I didn't mind it.”
“He doesn't really know where he came from,'' said Bobby when told about his son's memory of childhood. “Somebody could say, 'is there anybody here from Oregon?' He says yes. 'Anybody here from Texas?' He says yes.”
If Roper calls anywhere home, it's the area where Texas and Oklahoma meet.
As a senior quarterback at Ardmore (Okla.) High, Roper and future Oklahoma State running back Rafael Denson led the Tigers to a state championship in 1990. The next stop for Roper was Rice, where he started out as a quarterback and later moved to defensive back.
It was while in college that Roper faced one of the most difficult periods in his life. Dan, a couple of years older, was seriously injured in an automobile wreck while on the way to attend their grandfather's funeral.
He spent months in a coma with a brain injury.
“It was a problem for the family,'' Bobby recalled. “It's a time I don't want to live through again.”
Kurt, extremely close to Dan as they bounced around the country during their formative years, tried to balance his football career, coursework and family responsibilities. He would drive back and forth from Houston to Dallas, where Dan was being treated, every other weekend to help his parents with some of the care and rehab.
Growing up, you hear 'family is the most important thing' over and over,'' Kurt said. “In a situation like that, you learn what that means and you react accordingly. That was a moment that brought us all together.”
Dan eventually recovered and wanted to settle in Fayetteville to be close to his beloved Razorbacks. Bobby, whose final season in coaching was at Texas A&M in 1984, and Sue decided that's where they would move, too, to spend their retirement years.
*****
The biggest storyline surrounding the Gators as they prepare to open the season Saturday night against Idaho is the addition of Roper and what impact that could have on a UF team that averaged an SEC-low 18.8 points a game and only 316.7 yards in 2013.
Roper made a favorable impression in the spring as he installed a no-huddle attack that stresses quick decision making by the quarterback and relies heavily on the natural instincts of the skill players in space.
“In our 15 days of spring, we got a lot more done than I thought we would,'' Muschamp said. “He's an outstanding fundamental football coach.”
Kurt and Britt with their daughter, Reese, and son, Luke. (Photos provided by Britt Roper).
Former Duke quarterback Thaddeus Lewis, who spent last season with the Buffalo Bills, blossomed his junior season at Duke when Roper arrived. Roper's upbeat and detail-oriented approach made Lewis look at the game differently.
“He was very influential in allowing me to take it to the next level,” Lewis said. “He is a tough-nosed coach. Florida got a great offensive coordinator and a great quarterbacks coach.”
Florida quarterback Jeff Driskel enters his redshirt junior season playing for his third offensive coordinator. As a freshman in 2011 Charlie Weis was running the offense. Pease was in that role the past two seasons.
Driskel echoed much of what Lewis had to say about Roper's style and ability to connect with players.
“He's always a positive guy, and we needed that around here,'' Driskel said. “He's not going to be one to have an off day on the field. He's always going to be bringing the energy.”
While he made the difficult decision to leave Cutcliffe and his brother Zac at Duke, Roper also had to say goodbye to players that he had come to regard as family. Roper's six years at Duke matched his time at Ole Miss as the longest stint he has lived in one place.
Roper remains close to those he left behind. He recently called to check on Duke tight end Braxton Deaver, who suffered a knee injury in camp and will miss the season. Deaver and teammates Anthony Boone, Thomas Sirk and Brandon Connette drove to Gainesville in April for Florida's spring game and stayed with the Ropers.
That ability to quickly connect with others and his general positive outlook are what attracted Britt to Roper when they began dating.
She has a tendency to worry about the worst outcome of any situation. Roper is a glass half-full kind of guy and takes that approach on the field.
“He doesn't worry. He just assumes that everything is going to go as he plans it,'' said Britt, who left her television career once they got married. The couple now has two young kids. “He is shocked when it goes bad. That's just his personality.”
Roper explains his approach on the field in simple terms.
“Football is game, it's supposed to be fun,” he said. “There's a time to be serious and time to lock in but I learned a long time ago that if you take a player's hope away, that's when you got a guy who's going to struggle. I want them to have hope and belief in themselves and enjoy coming out here and playing.”
The past few months have served as Roper's introduction at Florida. On Saturday night the lights come on. The curtain will be pulled back on his offense for the world to see.
Everyone will be watching. Roper is fine with that.
Remember, he's not one to fret. He comes up with a plan and then turns it over to the players to execute it. That approach has gotten him this far and he is ready to show it off to Florida fans on Saturday night at 7.
“I hope they're excited. I want them to be excited. I hope we meet the expectations,” Roper said. “Whenever you are coaching at the University of Florida, the expectations are to win football games. I think that's really the bottom line.
“I hope we can do it with exciting offense and a lot of points. We want to go out and play well. I hope, at the end of the day, they're happy I'm here.”
