KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Growing up in Trenton, Missouri, there's only one NFL team for which you cheer.
"1,000% Kansas City Chiefs," new Chiefs special teams assistant coach Andy Hill said Thursday on a videoconference with reporters.
Trenton, a town of about 6,000 people in Grundy County, is where Hill grew up as a die-hard Chiefs fan.
"My parents used to take me down to training camp at William Jewell," he said.
Not only that, after finishing his playing career at the University of Missouri, where he had originally walked on before becoming a standout wide receiver, Hill was invited to three NFL training camps —in Tampa Bay, Seattle and Kansas City.
The choice was easy.
"I made it to the last cut," Hill said. "They had a bunch of good receivers — Carlos Carson, Stephone Paige, Henry Marshall — a bunch of guys who were really good players, and I was very fortunate just to get the tryout."
Not long after his NFL dream ended, Hill returned to his alma mater, where he stayed for 24 years as an assistant coach for the Tigers — the second-longest stint of any coach in Missouri football history.
"It's unique that I was very fortunate to live and be in a place for one spot for a long time at Mizzou," Hill said.
But when Andy Reid came calling after the Super Bowl, coaching for his boyhood team was too good of a gig to pass up.
"I was there in the very first part of March, so the Super Bowl win was still very fresh in the building," Hill said. "The positive mojo, the positive vibes from all the Chiefs — not just the coaches, but all the personnel in the entire building — was something that really was phenomenal for me."
Hill has plenty of connections with the Chiefs. He coached Chiefs Special Teams Coach Dave Toub at Mizzou in the 1990s.
"I'm in my basement right now," Hill said, referring to the location of his Zoom interview. "And Dave Toub, before he got hired by Andy Reid in Philadelphia, was finishing out my basement. If you ask about half the people in Columbia, Missouri, if they have a house addition or a basement finished, Dave Toub was probably doing it at the time he was here."
Of course, Hill will now be working with Toub on the Chiefs' special teams unit.
"The biggest transition really is going to be the rule changes," Hill said, "and the evaluation of talent as you get into fall camp."
Hill has plenty of history with Arrowhead Stadium. He said he was there as a fan the last game played at Arrowhead — the AFC Championship Game — and he also was involved in some epic Border War battles there with the University of Kansas.
"If people ask me my greatest memory of being a coach at Missouri or even playing at Missouri, it would be that 2007 game against the 'team to the west'," Hill said. "We knew whoever won that game was going to be ranked No. 1 and have a chance to play for the national championship."
Spoken like a kid from Trenton.
