Kap Dede doesn’t just talk the talk when it comes to the importance of education.

Those three letters at the end of his name – Ph.D. – shows that the first-year WKU assistant football coach has very much walked the walk in terms of maximizing his opportunities in higher education.

It’s an important message for Dede, who coaches outside linebackers and is the run game specialist under WKU defensive coordinator Tyson Summers.

A former standout football player at Auburn, Dede was a three-time All-SEC Academic Team selection and was a semifinalist for the William V. Campbell Trophy, considered college football’s academic Heisman.

“It’s something I tell my kids all the time – the game is a vessel that can take you and carry you and put you in an opportunity and situations to get your master’s or potentially your Ph.D,” Dede said.

“When you go to Auburn, a lot of it’s all football all the time. It wasn’t until I got a little bit older that I realized that man, I’m glad I took school seriously because by the time I was 26, football was over. And it was really my education that would help me get jobs and shaped who I was.”

Dede, who signed with the NFL’s New York Giants out of college and had a stint with the Canadian Football League’s Montreal Alouettes before a preseason injury ended his playing days, soon began his coaching career by returning back to Auburn, Alabama. Having already earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Special Education by the time he ended his playing career, Dede embarked on earning his doctorate in Administration in Higher Education from Auburn.

So yes, there was a time when Dede was in fact preparing to defend his dissertation in academics and working to defend the spread offense during his coaching duties at Auburn High School.

Dede succeeded in both: he successfully defended his dissertation, “An Examination of the Relationships Among Socioeconomic Status, Learning Disabilities, Academic Competence, and Social Fluency for Division I Student-Athletes,” to earn his doctoral degree. And Dede has been successful enough against the spread, the pistol, the option or any other offense to stay employed as a coach – first at the high school level and then as a college assistant – since the end of his playing days.

“When you defend your dissertation – and this is something that my adviser and my mentor told me – when people go in to defend their dissertation, they’re nervous, there’s a lot of experts in the room, there’s a lot of people with a lot of knowledge in the subject area,” Dede said. “And something that always stuck with me was the day that you walk in to defend your dissertation, you are the expert in your area. You are the most knowledgeable in your particular study in the room, and so that gives you a lot of confidence going in.”

“ … In terms of ball, I’ve been playing the game – I played the game as a child, grew up playing it high school and then went into college. So defending the spread and that kind of stuff, I’m constantly growing and learning new things. That part was kind of the easier part for me.”

Making the game easier for his players is a core tenet of Dede’s coaching philosophy, which was informed by his academic studies. Dede’s dissertation looked at three primary factors – education, occupation and income – as indicators of success and achievement in academics. His background in special education also prepared Dede for the variety of different learning styles he has encountered as a coach.

“I think the thing it taught me is that all people learn differently,” Dede said. “And so in football, if you have one way of teaching something it may not reach every player. There’s certain players, when you look at a disability like dyslexia for example, people can mis-orient letters – the P can be a B, can be a 9, can be a G in different characters. What people don’t realize is you might tell a kid, “Hey, I need five yards. I want you in this spatially, five yards.’ Well some kids can’t orient what five yards is. They need to see it, they need to mark it off with lines on the field and that kind of thing.

“I think it helps me a lot in terms of understanding sometimes you need to teach a kid by showing them on the board, sometimes showing them on a video, sometimes you need to do a walk-through. Every kid learns different and you’ve got to try to match their learning styles. I think that’s the most helpful.”

WKU redshirt senior outside linebacker Sebastian Benjamin has had a front row seat for Dede’s coaching methods.

“He’s like a professor, for sure,” Benjamin said. “If he’s got to tell you anything, he’s going to write it down. One time he was giving me directions to his house and he wrote it all down on the board – you’re going to go through here, you’re going to water front, you’re going to get to the pool, you’re going to make that turn .. yeah, he’s one of those. I like it, me personally.”

Benjamin and the other more experienced players get plenty of information from Dede in for game preparation during practice and in sessions leading up to game day.

“If nothing else, he’s a stickler,” Benjamin said. “He’s real big on details, real big on the ins, the outs, the small things and I appreciate that. I’m a guy that tries to hone in on small things. He’s real attention to detail, real intense on practice and stuff like that, but he’s a real good position coach.”

That coaching style works for Benjamin and the other experienced linebackers in Dede’s position group, but it’s not a effective one-size-fits-all method. It’s part of the lesson Dede learned both as a player as a safety and linebacker at Auburn and in his academic studies before embarking on a coaching career that included stops as an assistant in high school, then a graduate assistant at Auburn followed by his first head coaching job at Woodbridge High School in his hometown of Woodbridge, Virginia. Dede has since worked as a college assistant at Louisville, Mississippi State, Florida, Arkansas, Colorado State, Charlotte and Long Island before joining WKU’s staff in the spring.

Dede brought a wealth of personal experience to WKU and the knowledge that while his experience is unique, each of his players has their own unique experience they have brought to the program. Finding the best way to match that experience and translate it into effective coaching has long been Dede’s goal.

What works for Benjamin might not work for an incoming freshman in terms of Dede’s coaching.

“I try to reach the players at a level of whatever understanding, so I would not necessarily be too technical,” Dede said. “Like with freshmen, I want them to understand like, ‘Hey, here’s what a five technique is.’ Sometimes people overlook certain things in football. Like when I was in football at Auburn, when I was in high school nobody ever really told me to look at the hash marks. It was just, ‘Hey, cover-2, you’ve got this half.’ So the first time I got in college, they said ‘Hey, you need to be two yards outside the hash.’ And one of my plays my freshman year, I lined up two yards from the hash and the other safety was on the same side of the field as me. We both pedaled out and coach was like, ‘What are you doing?’ I’m like ‘Coach, you told me find a hash, get two yards away from it.’ Well I was on the wrong half of the field, I just went and ran and found a hash.

“So with freshmen I don’t take anything for granted. I look at it like I tell a kid, ‘Hey, I want you to hit the A gap.’ You assume he knows what the A gap is, but does he? So sometimes you have to ask kids what they know. They all come from different programs. If it’s a guy that’s been playing a long time and understands certain concepts, I think I’ll be more nerdy about it and tell them this is why this happens on this particular play, but not with freshmen, not with young guys that are learning the game. I try to teach it at a base level.”

Dede’s background – a Ph.D. teaching cover-3 – offers the Hilltopper outside linebackers a unique template for potential success on the football field and beyond. Those three letters at the end of Dede’s name are proof it is a pattern than can be replicated by others.

“I tell my players, the guys that I recruit, education means a lot to me. It’s changed my life,” Dede said. “It’s helped me to support my family and given me different opportunities. So one of the big things for me is to show my players that hey, this game can be a vessel to help you get your degree and then go on to get your master’s.

“It means a lot to me. A lot of hard work, but something that I’m very proud of.”{&end}