MOBILE, Ala. – University of South Alabama assistant football coach Matt Kitchens sat down with USAJaguars.com to answer five questions entering his first season as a member of the Jaguar staff.

Following a four-year career at Arkansas Tech — which included posting 46 tackles with 7½ for loss as a senior for a 9-3 team that won its first-round NCAA Division II playoff contest — Kitchens earned his degree in communications in 2009 and then entered the coaching profession at his alma mater the next season.  He was a graduate assistant for two years before serving in a full-time capacity in 2012, then moved on to take a graduate assistant coaching position at Southern Miss for the next two falls.  Kitchens joined first-year South head coach Steve Campbell's staff at Central Arkansas in 2015, and over the last three years helped the Bears go 27-9 overall and 24-3 in the Southland Conference while making back-to-back NCAA Football Championship Subdivision playoff appearances.

1: What led to your decision to become a football coach?
MK: I think everyone has a point in their life where they have a coach who made them want to be a football coach, for me it was a guy — Cody McNabb — who led me to want to do it when I got done playing in high school, just watching him and how he would go about his business.

2: What is your coaching philosophy, and which mentor has played an influential role in your professional development?
MK: My coaching philosophy is to be energetic and have a good time — I think football is a fun game and you should have fun doing it — but it comes down to teaching and helping the kids find a way where they can get it.  Cody McNabb would be one role model and Steve Mullens, my head coach in college, would be another as far as developing toughness, discipline, a work ethic and being task-oriented.  Playing for him and working under him, it all started there.  I've had some really good role models, I've been blessed.

3: What are your goals for the program and how do you go about accomplishing them?
MK: I think it starts with graduation, any time you're in a collegiate environment it starts with wanting to graduate every kid; that's a program goal that Coach Campbell has always had.  And we want to win championships.  To me it starts with getting in the middle of it all — no job is too big and no task is above you — and rubbing elbows with the kids and support staff and doing it the way Coach Campbell sets out for it to be done.

4: If you were not a football coach you would be a ___, and why?
MK: I guess I would be in some kind of sales capacity.  I know what I wouldn't do, which is run convenience stores like my family did.  I don't know the last time that I've thought about if I were to do something else what would it be.

5: What is the most interesting personal fact about you that can't be found in your bio?
MK: I own a Standard Poodle, and his name is Stony.

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