Chip Kell, Tennessee football great and former Southeast Whitfield coach, dies at 75

Published 1:29 pm Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Curtis Cliff “Chip” Kell, a former All-American lineman at the University of Tennessee and head football coach at Southeast Whitfield High School, died Sunday.

Kell, who was a resident of Cohutta and died at Hamilton Medical Center in Dalton, was 75.

Kell graduated from Avondale High School before playing center and then guard for the Tennessee Volunteers. Kell was a three-time All-Southeastern Conference Player, a two-time All-American and a two-time Jacobs Trophy winner as the top blocker in the SEC.

Kell was drafted by the then-San Diego Chargers of the NFL in 1971 and spent time playing for the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League in 1971 and 1972.

Kell was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2006, and, because of his time as a high school player, he was part of the inaugural class of the Georgia High School Football Hall of Fame when the hall was created in 2022.

After his playing days, Kell leapt back into football as a coach. Kell was a head coach at Calhoun and Union County and Hixson in Tennessee before spending a four-season stint as head coach of the Southeast Whitfield Raiders from 2002 until 2005. Kell’s first three teams finished 1-9 before his 2005 squad went 4-6.

The Southeast job was Kell’s last as a high school head football coach. Kell lived in Cohutta in retirement and published an autobiography in 2014 titled “All in God’s Glory: Adoption to the College Football Hall of Fame.”

“I always felt like I did things with the right heart, especially when it came to helping kids and coaching kids,” Kell told the Daily Citizen in a 2014 interview. “In my mind a good coach influences kids and teaches them to be their best in whatever they do.”

Kell was a member of Varnell Church, according to an obituary published by Julian Peeples Funeral Home.

A funeral service will be held on Saturday at noon at Varnell Church, according to the obituary, and Kell’s family will receive friends at the funeral home on Friday from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.