Curtis Cliff “Chip” Kell, a former All-American lineman at the University of Tennessee and head football coach at Southeast Whitfield High School, died on Sunday.
Kell, 75, was a Cohutta resident who died at Hamilton Medical Center in Dalton.
Kell graduated from Avondale High School before going on to play center and guard for the Tennessee Volunteers. Kell was a three-time All-Southeastern Conference player, a two-time All-American, and twice the Jacobs Trophy winner as the SEC’s greatest blocker.
Kell was drafted by the then-San Diego Chargers of the NFL in 1971 and then played 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 high school playing career, he was a member of the Georgia High School Football Hall of Fame’s initial class when it was established in 2022.
Following his playing career, Kell returned to football as a coach. Kell previously coached at Calhoun, Union County, and Hixson in Tennessee before spending four seasons as the Southeast Whitfield Raiders’ head coach from 2002 to 2005. Kell’s first three teams were 1-9, followed by a 4-6 record in 2005.
Kell’s last high school head football coaching position was at Southeast. In retirement, Kell lived in Cohutta and wrote an autobiography 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.