LET’S LIGHTEN AND TALK SELLING CARS

By STEVE KING

The NFL is a serious business. There’s a lot on the line every single day.

If the sudden and stunning retirement of quarterback Andrew Luck taught us anything, it is that.

So, then, it’s fun – a whole heckuva lot of fun, really – to take a break from all that seriousness every once in a while.

Remember the great line from Sgt. Hulka to Killer in the movie, “Stripes?”

“Lighten up, Francis.”

Or, in this case, “Lighten up, Freddie.”

Yeah, it was pretty much like that as Browns head coach Freddie Kitchens met with the Cleveland media following practice on Monday as the club began getting ready for its preseason finale against the Detroit Lions on Thursday night at FirstEnergy Stadium.

Sure, the Browns, like all teams, even the good ones, still have personnel issues they need to clear up before the start of the regular season in a little less than two weeks. We all know what those things – right guard in particular and the offensive line as a whole, kicking, getting all the stars on the same page in the passing game, and so on and so forth — are for the Browns.

But all that combined to serve as the minor portion of Kitchens’ presser. The major portion – and an extremely enjoyable and revealing and even funny, a very funny one at that – was delving into his early professional life and hearing once again how in the heck he made the meteoric rise to become the head coach of the Cleveland Browns.

Here’s a sample or two and then I’ll let you go:

When asked to recount the start of his coaching career, Kitchens said, “I was selling cars in Tuscaloosa at Magnolia Nissan and BMW. I was salesman of the month two out of the three months. I worked there for three months. I was just not happy. I was just kind of living life and was not happy, internal happiness, per se. 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 $500 either all at once or $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 was then asked how many cars he had to sell to be salesman of the month, to which he answered, “I do not remember exactly, 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. That was plenty. That was more than I ever had before.”

I love this kind of stuff. I hope you guys did, too.