Kingdom clears final hurdle of Super Bowl championship
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Roger Kingdom, former track and field coach at California University and a two-time Olympic gold medalist, is the speed and conditioning coach for the Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Justin Rex
Kingdom
Roger Kingdom spent much of his life running away from opponents and running toward his ultimate goal.
That journey ended Sunday night in Tampa when the Buccaneers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs, 31-9, in the Super Bowl.
Mission accomplished.
Kingdom, Tampa Bay’s speed and conditioning coach, said his lifetime goal was to be a Super Bowl champion.
He became only the second human to win both an Olympic gold medal – Kingdom has two – and a Super Bowl. Bob Hayes is the only other person that won an Olympic gold medal and a Super Bowl, the latter with the Dallas Cowboys.
“It’s a great feeling,” Kingdom said. “It’s such a small fraternity.”
Kingdom, who coached the California University track and field team for 10 years, won two Olympic gold medals in the 110-meter hurdles – the first in 1984 in Los Angeles and the second in in the 1988 Games in Seoul.
He also set a world record in the 110-meter hurdles.
With all that, it still did not fulfill his ultimate goal of winning a Super Bowl championship.
Finally, he has overcome that hurdle.
“I’ve been chasing this Super Bowl ring a long time,” Kingdom said Tuesday. “To have it is an overwhelming feeling. All of a sudden, dreams come true.
“After I won the two Olympic gold medals and broke the world record, I asked myself, where now?”
Kingdom, 58, was an NCAA champion at Pitt, winning the 110 hurdles in the 1983 NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championship and then the 1984 NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championship in the 55-meter hurdles in 7.08.
He also is a two-time gold medalist in the Pan Am Games (1983 and 1995 in the 110-meter hurdles) and won gold medals in the IAAF World Cup (1989), IAAF World Indoor Championships (1989 in the 60-meter hurdles) and Summer Universiade (1989 in 110 hurdles).
Kingdom also won a gold medal in the 1990 Goodwill Games in Seattle.
He began his college career at Pitt on a football scholarship as a running back and free safety on a team with future Pro Football Hall of Famers Dan Marino, the late Chris Doleman and Jimbo Covert.
Kingdom, a Georgia native, considered himself a football player who could sprint. But his overwhelming talent in track and his work ethic pushed him toward a future in track. He considered becoming a decathlete. He could high jump 7-feet, 1-inch, and was a 25-foot long jumper before becoming the world’s top high hurdler.
As part of Pitt’s 2018 Hall of Fame, the university presented a short video on Kingdom.
“(He was) just another football player,” said long-time Pitt play-by-play man Bill Hillgrove on the film tribute. “But the track people knew he wasn’t just another track guy.
“He would have been a very good football player. But there is a difference between very good and an all-time great. That’s what he was.”
Ironically, it’s the second consecutive year the Super Bowl championship team had a connection to Cal. Last season, Barry McGlumphy, an online professor at Cal and a Washington native, was part of Kansas City’s Super Bowl victory serving on the team’s training staff during training camp and also helping out during the season as his schedule allowed.
“My time at Cal U. was a good time,” Kingdom said. “I thought we competed well in the PSAC. I enjoyed my time there. The budget cuts came.
“I was entering a new phase of my life. My girlfriend, Mary, who is now my wife, was in Florida and that’s where I wanted to be.”
The couple and their three daughters reside in Orlando.
After Cal, Bruce Arians called and asked Kingdom to join his staff with the Arizona Cardinals. After Arians retired and then was hired by the Bucs, the coach again called on Kingdom.
He works mostly with the receivers, running backs and defensive backs. Kingdom said some lineman and linebackers join his workouts at times with the skill-position players.
In the Super Bowl, Tampa Bay was the faster team.
“The run we just made is so satisfying,” Kingdom said. “It’s still surreal. It means so much to me. When you achieve what you’ve chased your whole life, it makes you wonder, what’s next. If we (assistants) get rehired, then two Olympic golds and two Super Bowl rings.”