NEWPORT, R.I. -- Gunner Kiel has finally found a place to call home.
When Kiel was a senior at East High School in Columbia, Indiana, he was ranked as the No. 1 quarterback in the Class of 2011 after throwing for 4,831 yards and 61 touchdowns in two years as a high school starter.
Kiel originally gave a verbal commitment to Indiana, then to LSU. He enrolled in Notre Dame in Dec. 2011, hoping to follow in the footsteps of his late uncle Blair, who played for the Irish from 1980-83. Kiel never got a chance to wake up the echoes. He spent a year hidden in the background as a redshirt while Everett Golson led the Irish to the BCS National Championship Game, then transferred to Cincinnati in the spring of 2013 to get a fresh start.
The 6-4, 213-pound Kiel sat out the 2013 season as a transfer, then began to make his mark on a program that went on win a share of the American Athletic Conference championship – the Bearcats’ fifth league title in the last seven years. Cincinnati was selected as the overwhelming favorite to win the East Division in The American at the league's annual media day.
Kiel started all 13 games as a redshirt sophomore for the Bearcats despite being limited by a rib injury suffered in an early season game against Ohio State. He completed 233 of 390 passes for 3,254 yards, a school-record-tying 31 touchdowns and 13 interceptions and a league-leading 149.4 efficiency rating for a 9-4 team that lost to Virginia Tech in the Military Bowl.
He is just scratching the surface of his prolific talent. Kiel, a two-time counselor at the Manning Passing Academy, is on the watch lists for the Manning, Walter Camp, Davey O'Brien and Maxwell awards.
“When I transferred from Notre Dame, I was kind of down about the decision” Kiel said. “I was kind of getting tired of getting bashed about the decisions. After I got that first year under my belt, staying under the radar, it was awesome. Not playing, sitting out was the best thing. Just to get away from the limelight.
“No one was on me. I wasn't the attention-seeker everyone thought I was. I didn't dress for any of the games. I didn't travel. I was just a normal student. I got to meet a lot of people who I'm going to have with me for the rest of my life.
“It was huge. Then, coming back and having the season I had last year, it was very special. I'm very lucky I had the Cincinnati family.”
Kiel comes from a football family. His father played quarterback at Butler. One of his two brothers, Drew, played quarterback for Indiana State. And Blair went on to play seven seasons in the NFL with Tampa Bay, Indianapolis and Green Bay.
He has become a classic study in lessons learned from recruiting when one is an elite prospect.
“I think it's just the whole recruiting thing, coming out of high school as the No. 1 quarterback in the nation and then the all the transfer decisions I made and all the commitments and de-commitments I made - this is not good” he said. “And you try to be the quarterback you want to be. You go out there and want to dominate and start as a freshman. There were things I just didn't understand. As I matured, I understood what happens. As a freshman you’ve got to come in and earn the guys’ respect and it's a process. It takes time.”
Kiel appears to have made the right decision when he decided for Cincinnati, a consistently winning program in southern Ohio caught in the shadows of Ohio State.
“I know I said it a million times that, 'Cincinnati is the place for me,”' Kiel said. “But deep down, I know it is. If I take football out of the situation, I love Cincinnati a lot. I will hands-down live in Cincinnati when I am done, just because of the people as a whole. I love the community. I can walk into the athletic center and know everybody by name and have a conversation and I love that. I love that it's a family atmosphere.”
Kiel could easily be the poster child for this program, which has poured $86 million into a facelift for Nippert Stadium with a new western pavilion and the addition of suites and luxury seats in an effort to upgrade its profile. The Bearcats could find themselves in the top 25 and should become a New Years Bowl factor if their defense improves.
“It's a huge honor for us to be picked to win the division,” Kiel said. “At the same time, it's a huge bullseye on our back. We just have to realize that we’re still Cincinnati and we're still going to play Cincinnati football and we have to go in and prepare for the season because there are a lot of great teams in our conference - Memphis, Temple, Houston, UCF.
“I think these guys who aren't in the power five conferences get very overlooked. There are so many teams out there who can play with the best and compete at a high level but they just don't get recognized for it. I feel like Memphis is just like a USC or UCF is like a Penn State or Baylor. My motto is ‘Anybody can beat anybody on a given Saturday.' That's just how it is.”
Cincinnati head coach Tommy Tuberville watched Kiel grow up out of necessity when he inserted him as a starter after Munchie Legaux suffered a career-threatening knee injury the second game of the 2013 season and was never 100 percent healthy last season.
“Gunner was a freshman last year,” Tuberville said. “Everybody thinks he has been around forever. He was a myth before he started the season and he did a lot better than I thought he would his first year. But he had some good players around him. He's grasped the offense a lot better.
“But he's going to have to play tougher, more physical this year. He only finished seven of the 12 games. I think he leaned a lot on Munchie last fall. Munchie had the microphone with the players because they loved him. He went through some tough situations. Munchie knew he couldn't be the starter because he was playing on one leg basically on a really bad knee. This year, (Kiel) doesn't have Munchie to lean on.
“So he's got to be the guy with the microphone and take it and run with it. So he’s got a chance to be a much better quarterback than last year. He has a lot of room for upside. This year, he's got a great supporting cast. Hopefully he uses it in the right way.”
“He's come a long way since last year,” Cincinnati senior offensive lineman Parker Ehinger – himself a first team all-conference selection, added. “He's stepping into a leadership role, which is awesome. Last year, coming into the season, they wanted it to be Munchie's team. He was the senior quarterback and you don't want to put the team in the hands of a sophomore that early. He proved himself. He proved he is a great quarterback through all the adversity he went through last year.
“He just needs to stay healthy this year and prove last year wasn't a fluke. It's going to come down to our offensive line to keep him off the ground as much as possible. But he's been doing a lot of offseason work, a lot of core work, a lot of strengthening his back.
“He says he feels better than he ever has. His back feels great. His ribs feel great. He says he feels 110 percent. I think it got to him a little bit mentally last year when he had to miss time in games.”
Kiel is going out of his way to make sure his veteran offensive line takes great pains to protect him in the pocket. He has even turned himself into a chef.
“I've been cooking for the guys,” he said. “I did it in high school. I cook spaghetti for all our offensive line guys every Tuesday. They don't get the praise I do. I'll get the newspaper clippings and the pictures and stuff, but they're in there in the trenches and doing all the dirty work. They deserve all the praise. So to give back to my offensive line, I'll do whatever it takes.
“I'm going to be in a new apartment by myself so it's going to be great to have those guys come over. It's hard feeding those big guys. It was easy in high school. Now, I'm getting about three-to-four pounds of ground meat and ladles of sauce. I stopped doing it for a while last year because it was a pain in my budget. I got the garlic bread, but I'm not going to get the salad. They don't need that at all.”
Spoken just like a man who has found himself a home.