Cancer free, quarterback Jim Kelly returns to the U

Jim Kelly, B.B.A. takes charge at UM Homecoming 2014.

It was the game that put Miami Hurricanes football on the map—a November 1979 road matchup against powerful Penn State.

Making his first collegiate start at quarterback for Miami was Jim Kelly, a kid from East Brady, Pennsylvania, who grew up dreaming about playing for the Nittany Lions.

“I went into that week as the backup QB,” recalls Kelly, B.B.A. ’83, a four-year letterman at UM from 1979 to 1982. “Coach [Howard] Schnellenberger told me after the pregame meal that I was going to be the starter. I was shocked. But I knew it was an opportunity to show that I could play. Coach gave me that opportunity, and I made the best of it.”

Indeed.

In front of more than 77,000 fans packed inside Beaver Stadium, Kelly, who was so nervous before the game that he threw up, passed for 280 yards and three touchdowns to lead unranked Miami to a 26-10 victory over a Penn State squad replete with future NFL stars.

A few decades earlier, inside the Orange Bowl, he’s already Kelly Tough.

Kelly’s heroics continued. During the 1980 season, the 6-foot, 3-inch field general led Miami to its first bowl game in 14 years—a Peach Bowl victory over Virginia Tech in January 1981. He would go on to defeat Penn State again, knocking off the then-No. 1-ranked Nittany Lions 17-14 in the Orange Bowl on October 31, 1981.

Kelly concluded his Miami career with 406 completions, 5,233 passing yards, and 32 touchdowns.

“Jim Kelly is as much responsible for rescuing the University of Miami football program and athletic department as anyone,” says former teammate and current UM offensive line coach Art Kehoe, B.B.A. ’83. “So many people have been important to this program, but Jim Kelly was a guy who took us from being ready to drop football to being a national championship contender and having prominence again. He was such a tough guy and such a leader. He always wanted to fight and scrap.”

For the past year and a half, Kelly has battled a challenge unlike any of the stout and sturdy defenses he so expertly dismantled as the star quarterback of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills from 1986 to 1996 and of the USFL’s Houston Gamblers for two seasons before that.

In March 2013, the UM and NFL Hall of Fame quarterback was diagnosed with oral cancer and underwent surgery to remove part of his upper jawbone. But the cancer returned, and Kelly endured several rounds of radiation and chemotherapy. Now, he is declared cancer free—and “Kelly Tough,” a phrase he coined and has lived by.

Long before battling cancer, Kelly’s fortitude was tested—two plates and ten screws in his back, a plate and six screws in his neck, a double hernia.

But that all pales in comparison to the 2005 loss of his son, Hunter Kelly. Born on Valentine’s Day like his father, Hunter suffered from Krabbe disease, a rare degenerative disorder of the nervous system. In 1997 Kelly and his wife, Jill, established Hunter’s Hope Foundation, which has raised millions for research on Krabbe disease and other neurological disorders.

“To see a little boy fight and live to be 8 when he was given no more than 14 months to live, I can’t complain about anything I’m going through,” says Kelly. “It doesn’t compare.

“I admired his strength, his courage. He’s made me the man I am today. Each day I wake up, I know I probably wouldn’t have been able to fight this battle [against cancer] had it not been for a little boy named Hunter James Kelly.”

Kelly, who led the Bills to four straight Super Bowl appearances, also credits the support of his wife and daughters, Erin and Camryn. “They’ve been there every step of the way,” he says.

Kelly served as grand marshal for UM’s 2014 Alumni Weekend and Homecoming festivities and as honorary captain at the Homecoming football game where UM beat the University of North Carolina 47-20.

—Robert C. Jones Jr.

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