By Bill Burrus
Drew Hull doesn’t plan to do anything specific Saturday in memory of his father, but it was emotional day for him and his family.
His father, Kent Hull, a standout center at Mississippi State and later with the NFL’s Buffalo Bills, died 14 years ago Saturday at the age of 50 — just 10 days after he served as Drew’s best man in his wedding. While thankful his father was able to witness that, Drew hates that Kent missed the birth of his three children, including his namesake, Kent Hull Jr., who will turn 3 in a couple of a weeks.
“I miss being able to talk to him man-to-man about life circumstances and decisions. And I hate that my kids never got to know him,” said Drew, who works in land financing in Oxford.
Kent’s widow, Kay Hull Kimmel, said she will try not to think about it too much because, obviously, it dredges up some painful memories. She prefers to reminisce about more positive things, such as birthdays, anniversaries and other milestone moments in Kent’s memory.
Kent’s daughter, Ellen Black of Madison, said she regrets her father missing her wedding and the birth of her two daughters.
“He passed when I was still in college, so I feel I never got to the full ‘friend’ stage with him,” she said. “There are so many things I wish I could ask him about his career and his experiences that I didn’t think to ask as a child or young adult. I remember going back to Buffalo when my dad went on the Wall of Fame … and seeing how much those people still admired him even after that long.
“The life we lived seemed so normal growing up, and now I realize it was something super special not many get to experience.”
Hull, a member of both the MSU and Buffalo Bills rings of honor, is still remembered by his former teammates as the secret sauce to the Bills’ explosive K-Gun offense of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Stars such as Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas and Andre Reed grabbed the headlines, but Thomas says the Greenwood High School product was an integral part of the big offensive numbers that led the Bills to four straight Super Bowls.
The K-Gun, led by Kelly at quarterback of the wide-open, no-huddle attack, was ahead of its time in the NFL. Thomas was a running and pass-catching threat out of the backfield, with Reed at wideout.
The Buffalo Bills of the late 1980s and early 1990s were a wagon of unprecedented proportions. Not only did Kelly, Thomas, Reed and Co. become the only team ever to reach the Super Bowl four years in a row.
“It was Kent Hull that really solidified that offense,” said Thomas. “All of us have no problem admitting that.”
At center, Hull always held his own in the trenches, but it was his “football brain” that helped the Bills the most in key situations.
“Even though we ran a quick, fast-striking offense, there were plenty of times that, whether it was a passing play or a running play, Kent would be like, ‘You can’t not run that.’ Kent was the backbone because he called off a lot of plays and made all the blocking and protection calls. It would always seem like when he said something, a negative play could have occurred, but he would make Jim change the play, and it would be a fantastic play,” Thomas said.
Thomas, Kelly and Reed are all in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The top offensive lineman from that team, however, is not. To many fans, it just doesn’t make any sense. With his blood, sweat and tears, Kent paved the way for those guys to put up those Hall of Fame statistics, and you won’t get an argument from Thomas.
“First of all, to me, there’s no doubt that he belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame,” said Thomas. “Reliability, longevity and leadership. That was our guy.”
After the funeral in 2011, Hall of Fame teammate Bruce Smith looked Drew in the eye and told him: “It is up to you to let him keep living.”
“That stuck with me, and I try to keep that in the front of my mind every day,” he said. “I will never give up hope on the Hall of Fame. Now that he’s past the modern-era nomination level of eligibility and now in the senior group, and so it is very easy to get lost in that group, and you really have to have someone pushing hard for you to get on the ballot.”
The good news for Hull’s family is that former Buffalo general manager Bill Polian is on that committee and certainly in his corner. Drew can only hope for now, but he takes great solace in the fact that so many ex-teammates are still keeping his father’s name alive.
“Jim Kelly and Thurman Thomas have both stated multiple times that they are not in the Hall of Fame without Kent Hull. So if it never happens, those statements are good enough for me,” Drew said.
Although Kent was obviously known for his football prowess, it was the man behind the player who impressed so many. His funeral in Greenwood brought luminaires from the NFL and MSU.
While Ellen loves to hear the gridiron stories about her dad, some of her most cherished memories center around Kent the man and all the things he did in donating his time, talents and money to help others.
Hull was active with several charities, did things behind the scenes to help those in need and witnessed to some in jail.
Kent was beloved in Buffalo, and that had to do with the way he handled himself like a champion on and off the field. He was a blue-collar country boy who quickly caught the eyes of the blue-collar fans in western New York. There was a deep connection between him and the community up there with Hull, who could be seen at Buffalo Sabres hockey games hanging with the NHL fans in the stands.
Hull never saw himself as a celebrity. He was real and honest, and that’s why he was one of the Bills’ media members’ favorites to talk to, according to Vic Carucci, who was a Bills beat writer at the time.
“You know how writers are,” Carucci said. “Kent did our jobs for us in so many ways. Maybe you had to move the pen a little bit, but his quotes just jumped onto your notebook and into your story.”
Lucky enough to be on the field during Kent’s Bills Ring of Honor accolades, this writer remembers seeing a guy on the front row holding up a sign that read: “It’s been a Hull of a Ride.”
You could feel that love; it was real, both ways.
But it was a run nobody could have predicted, especially not the unassuming Hull. And he never took anything for granted during that time.
How thankful for his time in Buffalo was Hull? Well, he didn’t mince words in August 1996, when he said: “I told my wife this: ‘If they called me right now and told me that I had been released, I’d go over there and shake every one of those hands and truly get down on my knees and thank them for this ride.’”
Another teammate, Steve Tasker, summed up Kent the man quite precisely: “You can’t hide what you are in the locker room. You can’t be a phony. I remember a bunch of times thinking to myself, ‘What Kent said is what I should think.’ I adopted his opinions as my own.”