Alfred Terance "Terry" Kinard (born November 24, 1959) is a former American college and professional

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

player who was a safety in the National Football League (NFL) for eight seasons during the 1980s and 1990s. He played

college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States. Unlike most ...

at Clemson University, and was a two-time consensus All-American. Kinard was selected in the first round of the

1983 NFL Draft The 1983 NFL Draft was the procedure by which National Football League teams selected amateur college football players. It is officially known as the NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting. The draft was held April 26–27, 1983, at the New York She ...

, and played professionally for the NFL's

New York Giants The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. ...

and Houston Oilers.

Early years

Kinard was born in

Bitburg Bitburg (; french: Bitbourg; lb, Béibreg) is a city in Germany, in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate approximately 25 km (16 mi.) northwest of Trier and 50 km (31 mi.) northeast of Luxembourg city. The American Spangdahlem ...

, West Germany. He attended

Sumter High School Sumter High School is a co-educational four-year public high school serving grades 9 through 12 in Sumter School District located in the south side of Sumter, South Carolina, United States. With an enrollment of approximately 2,300 students, Sumt ...

Sumter, South Carolina Sumter ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Sumter County, South Carolina, United States. Known as the Sumter Metropolitan Statistical Area, the namesake county adjoins Clarendon and Lee to form the core of Sumter-Lee-Clarendon Tri-county (o ...

, graduating with the class of 1978.

College career

He attended Clemson University, where he played for the

Clemson Tigers football The Clemson Tigers are the American football team at Clemson University. The Tigers compete in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the Atlantic Division of the Atlantic C ...

team from 1979 to 1982. Kinard was a two-time consensus first-team All-American for two years in a row. He was the CBS National Defensive Player of the Year in 1982 and selected to the '' USA Today'' All-College Football Team in the 1980s. Kinard is the all-time Clemson leader in interceptions with seventeen and tackles by a

defensive back In gridiron football, defensive backs (DBs), also called the secondary, are the players on the defensive side of the ball who play farthest back from the line of scrimmage. They are distinguished from the other two sets of defensive players, the ...

with 294. His college career did not start smoothly. He suffered a separated shoulder in his first game and was out the rest of the season. He later said that having to redshirt turned out to be a good thing, as he was not physically ready to compete as a freshman. Kinard was inducted into the

College Football Hall of Fame The College Football Hall of Fame is a hall of fame and interactive attraction devoted to college football. The National Football Foundation (NFF) founded the Hall in 1951 to immortalize the players and coaches of college football that were vote ...

in 2001.

Professional career

The New York Giants selected Kinard in the first round (tenth pick overall) of the 1983 NFL Draft, and he played for the Giants from to . He played his eighth and final season for the Houston Oilers in . In his eight NFL seasons, Kinard played in 121 games, started 115 of them, made thirty-one interceptions and recovered seven fumbles.

Personal

Kinard married his wife Cassandra on June 21, 2003. Their son Jaden was born in 2004.

References

External links

NFL.com player page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kinard, Terry 1959 births Living people All-American college football players American football safeties Clemson Tigers football players College Football Hall of Fame inductees Houston Oilers players National Conference Pro Bowl players New York Giants players People from Bitburg Ed Block Courage Award recipients