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

Edenfield joined the Jaguar staff — and former college teammate, first-year USA head coach Steve Campbell — after serving 10 seasons at rival Troy, the last eight as offensive coordinator.  His efforts helped the Trojans to five postseason bowl appearances, four outright or shared Sun Belt Conference championships and the program's first-ever top-25 ranking, while during that time 39 individuals picked up all-league honors including a dozen who were named first-team all-SBC.  Edenfield was the offensive coordinator at North Alabama for six seasons from 2002-07, helping the Lions go 54-19 during that time with four NCAA Division II playoff appearances, and he also has experience at the NCAA Division I level serving as an assistant at Nicholls State from 1993-94 and at Tulsa during the 2001 campaign.  He earned three letters in football at Troy, where he was part of the school's 1987 NCAA Division II national championship team before earning a degree in mathematics education in 1989.

1: What led to your decision to become a football coach?
KE: It was a very easy decision.  My high school coach was a great influence on me, and all my coaches at Troy had a great influence on me too.  I have a math degree and a computer science degree and thought I wanted to do that, but the longer I was around those guys I knew that I wanted to coach and stay a part of the game.

2: What is your coaching philosophy, and which mentor has played an influential role in your professional development?
KE: I would have to say that my philosophy is the same as Coach Campbell's, being unselfish, making sure we're taking care of the little things and doing what's right; we come from the same background.  The guy who has probably been my biggest mentor is Rick Rose, he took me as a young player and a young coach and taught me how to teach the game, how to take care of the little things, do the right things and make sure you're unselfish.  Those things have stuck with me throughout my career.

3: What are your goals for the program and how do you go about accomplishing them?
KE: Our goals are to make sure, first and foremost, that we give our guys an opportunity to win every game.  How I do that is to make sure that I have prepared as hard as I can to give them that opportunity.  Second of all, we want every single one of our guys to graduate, and we do that by staying on top of them academically and talking to them about the advantages of getting their degree.  If we get every kid to graduate and we have a chance to win every football game we're going to be very successful.

4: If you were not a football coach you would be a ___, and why?
KE: I would be broke and probably divorced because I would be a miserable person if I wasn't coaching football.  I really can't see myself doing anything else, I have brothers who are in the business profession who are doing awesome but I could not see myself doing that.  I never really thought about doing anything else, I really didn't have a Plan B.

5: What is the most interesting personal fact about you that can't be found in your bio?
KE: This is probably the toughest question.  I was actually a pretty good basketball player in high school and thought that was the career path I was going to take, things changed and I thought I was going to be a basketball coach.  I coached ninth grade and assisted with the varsity my first year and realized real quickly that I did not want to be a basketball coach because you didn't have any breaks, you were working all through the holidays.

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