Editor’s note: Longtime Baton Rouge sportswriter, author and television host Lee Feinswog takes his unique approach to sports to dig deeper into LSU Athletics. Look for these features online and in official athletics department publications throughout the 2014-15 season.
The first family of LSU football?
Team Miles, of course, because Les is the head coach and over the past 10 years we’ve all gotten to know his wife, Kathy, and watch the four kids grow up.
But there has to be a place in the current LSU football hierarchy for the Kragthorpes, because you’d be hard-pressed to find a family more firmly entrenched — albeit largely behind the scenes — in the program.
Not that any of them could have imagined such a scenario.
Steve Kragthorpe, hired in 2011 as the offensive coordinator but never able to fulfill that role after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, has an official title as Special Assistant to the Head Coach/Chief of Staff. He is the son of a football coach.
Steve’s oldest son, Chris, is a graduate assistant who works with LSU’s offensive line.
Brad is a junior who left behind a scholarship at Idaho State to walk on at LSU. He is the third-string quarterback and the Tigers’ holder on place-kicks.
And Nik, a sophomore, is a student worker in LSU’s sports-information office, which isn’t that far fetched when you consider that Steve’s brother, Kurt, is a sports columnist for The Salt Lake (Utah) Tribune.
“I never had the desire to be a coach,” Nik said. “After moving around my whole life, I saw my dad working crazy hours and everything that goes into it. I always thought I’d never be a coach but I always thought Brad would be but not Chris.”
Chris lived in eight different states before he left to play football at Wheaton College near Chicago, but was able to go to high school in Tulsa, where his dad was the University of Tulsa head coach from 2003-06.
Steve, 48, has lived in so many places he can barely keep track. His football resume is a long one, including playing quarterback at Eastern New Mexico — where he also was a holder — and West Texas State.
His first job was as a graduate assistant at Oregon State, where his father, Dave, was the head coach. From there, he had assistant or coordinator jobs at Northern Arizona, Boston College and Texas A&M — where he first met Miles — and then quarterback coach for the Buffalo Bills.
In 2003 he became head coach at Tulsa — while Miles was head coach at nearby Oklahoma State — before replacing Bobby Petrino at Louisville in 2007.
And then his life seemed to jump to another speed.
Kragthorpe was fired after three seasons at Louisville in which he went 15-21. He went back to Texas A&M as the wide-receivers coach but never made it to the football season. That’s because his wife, Cynthia, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. And that’s not all. She needed surgery for a heart condition so she could take the medications needed to battle MS.
The original plan was for the family to stay in Tulsa, where they moved after leaving Louisville. Chris had gone off to Wheaton and Steve was going to work at Texas A&M.
But he knew he couldn’t stay.
“I was 45 and every year of my life I’d been in college football. My dad’s teams were playing, I was playing or I was coaching.”
Suddenly his life had a different focus.
“It was a good year from a family standpoint and it was good because I needed to be there for Cynthia and her recovery.”
He got to see Nik and Brad play football. He went to games that he normally wouldn’t have seen, like Texas-Oklahoma and Tennessee-Florida.
“I went to parent-teacher conferences, went to things I’d never gone to before. I tell people I don’t know if it was harder doing that or running to the games and just catching part of them when I was a head coach.”
Steve said watching his kids play was nerve-wracking.
“I used to go through about four bags of sunflower seeds. I would sit up by the band. I wouldn’t even sit by my parents or Cynthia. I couldn’t stand sitting in the stands. But it was a great year.”
Finally, Cynthia told him to go get a job.
“It was time to get back into football,” Steve said.
Speaking of Cynthia, you wouldn’t know she was fighting MS.
“I’m probably normal now,” she said with a hearty laugh. “People used to say I was like the Eveready Bunny, you know, go-go-go. But now I’m at probably more of a pace of a normal person. That’s what my friends say.”
She credits Louisiana.
“The lifestyle and culture here is so slow that it makes you slow down.”
Her family has nothing but admiration.
“She’s a stud,” Steve said. “She’s unbelievable. She’s amazing. We’ve been married for 26 years and had 11 jobs and one time, when the boys I think where 7, 5 and 2, we lived in five houses in 18 months. I had three jobs in those 18 months. She is amazing. She is the glue who holds it all together, there’s no question.”
The job opening he pursued was as LSU’s offensive coordinator. He not only knew Miles from their time in the state of Oklahoma together, but from when he was at Tulsa and Miles was the tight ends coach for the Dallas Cowboys and Kragthorpe would visit with their coaching staff.
“He’s a great football man from a great football family,” Miles said. “That was a natural. It was an easy hire.”
“It’s amazing how our lives weaved themselves back together,” said Kragthorpe, whose Tulsa team played and lost to Miles’ OSU squad in 2004.
“I was excited about the opportunity of being the offensive coordinator here. I felt like we had a chance to be really, really good on offense with the players we had and the coaches we had. As the players nowadays would say, I kind of felt like I had my swagger back. I was excited about the upcoming season.”
But something wasn’t right.
“I started having some tremors in my arm and extreme fatigue,” Kragthorpe recalled. He talked to different doctors and the prevailing thought was stress, not the least of which was getting fired at Louisville and Cynthia’s health.
“But I knew it wasn’t stress, because I’d felt stress before. This was not stress, this was something a little more dramatic.”
Unfortunately, he was right. Six months after arriving in Baton Rouge he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
“I tell people this: It’s not a devastating diagnosis for me, it was a devastating day. And I think that’s how you have to look at it. You’ve got to get back on the horse and ride, or as people would say you’ve got to play the hand you’re dealt and keep a great attitude about everything, which I try to do.”
The Parkinson’s Disease Foundation describes Parkinson’s as: “a chronic and progressive movement disorder, meaning that symptoms continue and worsen over time. Nearly one million people in the US are living with Parkinson’s disease. The cause is unknown, and although there is presently no cure, there are treatment options such as medication and surgery to manage its symptoms.”
Kragthorpe has never missed a day of work.
“Some days are better than others. It’s a fight. Every day’s a fight, but you just have to keep fighting every day. It’s a tough disease, there’s no doubt about it. But I’ve met a lot of people through it, God orders the steps of our lives, we’re a family of great faith, and I’ve learned a lot through it.
“ … There are a few ‘Why me?’ days, which is natural, but you’ve got to overcome those and get them behind you and learn from it.”
He works out daily, lifting weights, doing some light running and hitting a StairMaster.
“He’s a tough guy and if he was any worse for the wear I don’t think he would let us know,” Chris said.
But at the time of the diagnosis, he didn’t know what to expect. He and Miles had more than their share of heart-to-heart talks.
“We came to the conclusion that I wasn’t sure how I would respond to the medicines. I wasn’t sure if there would be a week when I couldn’t come to work. There were just so many unknowns and having been a coach for seven years in Division I football the direction that I talked to Les about, me stepping down and becoming the quarterback coach, is what I would have wanted to have happen if this was my staff. I just didn’t know. And everything worked out fine.”
That first year, then-offensive line coach Greg Studrawa took over as offensive coordinator and Kragthorpe became the quarterbacks coach. For that matter, in 2012 Brad transferred to LSU and it became the only time Steve ever coached one of his boys.
“I was glad we could have him as a quarterbacks coach,” Miles said. “Steve did a good job, but that was a short-term answer.”
So last season, when Miles hired Cam Cameron as offensive coordinator, Kragthorpe took on his new role, not the least of which includes advance opponent preparation. Because of NCAA staff limitations, he’s not allowed to actually coach. But he has many other jobs that help the program.
For example, shortly after LSU’s victory this past Saturday night over Louisiana-Monroe, Kragthorpe handed the coaches basically everything they needed to know about their next opponent, Mississippi State.
“He puts us ahead a couple, three hours knowing that we had a really bright football mind putting us in the right direction,” Miles said.
But the Kragthorpe contribution doesn’t end there. Chris, 25, sits by Cameron in the press box during games and works throughout the week with offensive-line coach Jeff Grimes.
“Bright as a whip,” Miles said of Chris, who played three seasons at Wheaton, a Division III school. But he blew out his knee his junior year and never made it back. However, he served as a student coach his senior year, which happened to be same season his father was first dealing with Parkinson’s.
“Obviously it’s difficult,” Chris said. “It’s never news you want to hear and never news you expect or are prepared for, but all things considered I think we all handled it pretty well. Our faith is a huge part of that.”
And the family bond, Chris pointed out.
“When you move around as much as we’ve moved around, you grow a lot closer because a lot of those constants in your life are not as constant as they are for other people. The constants you do have are your family and that really becomes huge for you.”
He smiled.
“My mom always used to say home is wherever we are.”
Home for all the Kragthorpes was about to become Baton Rouge, although Chris coaching at LSU was the last thing anyone would have expected a couple of years earlier, despite the family history.
“It’s neat and a great legacy and I’m definitely blessed to continue that,” Chris said. “But originally I wasn’t sure I wanted to coach kind of for that reason, ‘I’m not going to do what my dad did, I’m not going to do what my grandpa did.’
“But when I got hurt and when football to an extent was taken away from me, I realized how much this game has impacted me and has allowed my dad and my grandfather to impact others. And that was something that was really appealing to me and something I wanted to be a part of.”
He knew the right people, although his interview was with the LSU defensive coordinator.
“I was obviously a little nervous. He is John Chavis. But he was great to me,” Chris said. “Everybody here has been great to me throughout the entire process.”
He moved to the offensive side last season.
“Chris has done a great job,” Steve said. “One of those things that gets questioned when you try to get your son employed at the same place you are, but he’s gone over and above what anybody would expect him to do.
“He has all the qualities that will make him a great coach. He’s very intelligent. He’s a very good worker, I think he does a nice job communicating with players, and he’s a team player and that’s one of the things that will serve him well in this profession.”
It’s obvious when talking to Chris that you’re dealing with a mature young man with a mindful of football knowledge other people his age simply don’t have.
“I’ve been extremely fortunate in that regard,” said Chris, quick to praise Chavis, Cameron, Grimes and Miles. “Not only have I been around some great people, but some great people who have taken the time to build into me, because they’re great people not only in terms of being great coaches.”
While Chris was finishing at Wheaton, Brad was reconsidering life in Pocatello, Idaho.
That year was toughest on Cynthia, whom Chris said was locked into “this thousands of miles triangle.”
“We had just moved to Baton Rouge,” Cynthia recalled. “Every week I was flying to Idaho or Chicago or staying in Baton Rouge, because Nik played on Friday nights for U-High. I’ve heard moms complain that they have to go to two football games a week and I would just laugh because at one time I was going to four or five a week and three of them were in different states.”
Brad redshirted at Idaho State, which went 3-9 in 2011.
“I wanted to get away and be on my own,” Brad said. “I didn’t have many offers coming out of high school and it was a school that I liked and my grandparents lived about an hour and a half away (in Logan, Utah, where Dave retired from Utah State).”
But in his own words, “it wasn’t fun.” And having both his parents fighting their own medical battles in Baton Rouge weighed on him. So he started thinking about transferring and when Steve suggested walking on at LSU, “the idea started to grow on me. And Chris had ended up here and I decided it would best.”
He got to see younger brother Nik play in high school for the first time and hung out with older brother Chris for the first time in a long time. Cynthia could stop flying everywhere.
“My wife and I feel as if we’re almost stealing years back with our kids,” Steve said, “because all three of them could be someplace else.”
Brad was ruled immediately eligible in 2012 at LSU, but has yet to throw a pass in a game. LSU’s two quarterbacks this year are sophomore Anthony Jennings and freshman Brandon Harris.
“I’m kind of considered the older guy in the (QB) room,” said Brad, 22. “They come to me for advice sometimes because i don’t necessarily have game experience, I do have the background.”
Indeed.
“I think he enjoys being at LSU and enjoys going to school here,” Steve said. “He enjoys working with the other quarterbacks. He and Zach (Mettenberger) had a very close relationship. A lot of times the third-team quarterback is a guy who’s very involved in that room when the coaches aren’t there. I wouldn’t call him a player-coach, but he thinks like a coach because he’s been around it his whole life.”
Steve said that when he was at Tulsa and Brad was 8 or 9, “he’d be in the quarterback meetings instead of watching TV with his brothers.”
Brad beamed at the memory.
“I loved it. That’s what I lived for it. When he was at A&M and I was in kindergarten to second grade I would go with him on Sunday mornings and watch film and when he was at Tulsa I would always travel with the team and go to meetings. I lived for that.”
None of that is lost on Miles.
“He does our signaling (on the sidelines) and talks to our quarterbacks and is a guy who could take snaps for us,” Miles said.
Will Brad eventually coach?
“He could be if he wanted to be,” Chris said. “I think he’s got a mind for it.”
For now, he’s the holder who seems to take that job in stride. He has had one celebrity football moment this season. His uncle, Kurt, came to Houston to cover the LSU-Wisconsin season opener.
After the game, he asked Brad to autograph the media flip card. Brad asked why.
Chris, standing nearby, said Kurt told him, “It’s your grandmother’s birthday present.”
Brad replied that it wasn’t such a good present.
Said Kurt, “Brad, she’s had 80 birthdays. I’m running out of ideas.”
Nik doesn’t get asked for his autograph, but he had a strong high school career at U-High, where the quarterback waiting in the wings was his good friend Manny Miles.
“I thought I might have to take bigger role in the family at one point, but they deal with it really well,” Nik said of his parents. “They both get worn down and fatigued, they have their symptoms and stuff, but they always put on a strong face and they deal with it well. I try to help out around the house and be there for whatever they might need, but they’re strong people.”
Just as Steve helped Chris get a coaching gig and Brad a QB role, he asked LSU sports information director Michael Bonnette to take a look at Nik.
“He’s actually the smartest guy of all us. He’s saving his body and is still involved in athletics,” Steve cracked.
“Sports has shaped me and made me who I am, just being involved in college athletics with my dad my whole life. I want to work in sports but coaching is not for me.”
Nik considered playing college football.
“Once I decided against that there really wasn’t any other choice than LSU,” he said, noting that his friends from Tulsa wondered why he didn’t choose Oklahoma or Oklahoma State.”
“Oklahoma’s kind of boring compared to Louisiana once you get a taste of the culture down here,” Nik said. “You don’t really want to leave.”
None of them do. Chris will likely be the first to go, making that eventual move that young coaches make, but for now all the Kragthorpes are together.
“We’ve moved around a lot,” Nik understated. “Family’s always what’s kept us together. We’re really tight knit. Having everybody here has been good.”
Accordingly, they’re all grateful to LSU and Miles — who in turn credits athletic director Joe Alleva for allowing him to restructure his staff for Steve — for the opportunities.
“We’ve all got different roles and we’re all working our tails off to repay that debt,” Chris said, “but I’m not sure that would ever be possible.”
“It’s been challenging but at least he’s gotten to stay here and be a part of this program,” Cynthia said of her husband.
“Coach Miles — and please, quote me on this — Coach Miles has been so good to my family.”
It’s a family of which LSU can be proud.
“It’s been a roller-coaster ride,” Steve said. “But as my wife would say that in our whole life, our married life, and then in the coaching industry, with Parkinson’s and she’s got MS, our life has been an adventure.”