Former Kentucky assistant and two-time Super Bowl champion Steve Ortmayer dies
Steve Ortmayer, a former assistant head coach for the University of Kentucky whose career in coaching spanned parts of five decades and included two Super Bowl championships, died Tuesday morning. He was 77.
Ortmayer was an assistant coach for the entirety of former UK head coach Rich Brooks’ tenure, spanning from 2003 through Brooks’ retirement following the 2009 season. He coached tight ends as well as special teams at UK, and was part of an upswing in the program that saw the Wildcats play in four straight bowl games (winning three) and secure some of the program’s most memorable victories, including an upset of eventual national champion LSU in 2007.
While his coaching career began — he was an assistant at Colorado from 1967-1973 — and ended in the college ranks — UK was his final job — most of it was spent in the NFL, where he was a coach and executive for multiple franchises.
“The best way to describe Steve Ortmayer is that he was a football man,” Brooks said. “I mean, from A to Z, he was a football man.”
Ortmayer’s longest stint in the pro ranks lasted from 1979-1994 with the Oakland Raiders, for whom he served in multiple roles, including special teams coordinator and director of football operations. He was an assistant under Tom Flores when the Raiders won Super Bowls following the 1980 and 1983 seasons.
The Raiders issued an offering of condolences via their website Tuesday, within it acknowledging Ortmayer’s Super Bowl contributions as well as his prowess as a special teams coach.
“Some coaches kind of lose sight that special teams are a third of the plays in any given game almost and they don’t pay attention to it,” Brooks said. “Ort was a guy that would never let that happen.”
His other NFL stops included the Kansas City Chiefs, Green Bay Backers and Los Angeles Rams. He was part of executive teams that oversaw the Rams’ move to St. Louis and it was there where he and Brooks, the team’s head coach from 1995-1996, connected. Ortmayer was one of the first men he called to offer an assistant position when he became Kentucky’s head coach.
Kentucky was a good match for Ortmayer, a devout fan of Thoroughbred racing who “knew the sport inside and out” according to Jacob Tamme, a former UK tight end who went on to play nine years in the NFL following five years in Lexington. He loved attending Keeneland, Tamme said.
Ortmayer was the first tight ends coach that Tamme, a standout at receiver and defensive back at Boyle County High School before converting to the position at UK, ever had. He most associates “Coach Ort” with one quality: professionalism.
“Right before we started, every day he would say three words: ‘Let’s be professional,’” Tamme said. “That’s how we started every pre-practice session. That, to me, is the perfect summation of what he brought to the program when Coach Brooks came. Not only just because of all the experience he had in the NFL and different levels from being a general manager, coach, all those different things. He brought that presence to the program.”
Tamme had “no clue” he was going to develop into an NFL-level player when he came to Kentucky, let alone at a position he’d never played before suiting up as a Wildcat. He was a gifted receiver but was green at blocking, and Ortmayer had a simple method for motivating guys to become better in that department.
“After watching film and a guy would miss a block he’d say, ‘You think you would get that block if that defensive end told you he was gonna take a family member of yours hostage if you didn’t get it done?’” Tamme said. “We’d all laugh but we got the point. Blocking is about how important was it to you, so he helped me in that area.”
Brooks knew that talent evaluation, and the development of that talent, would be at a premium in the early going at Kentucky with NCAA-imposed scholarship limitations in place due to a recruiting scandal that preceded him. Ortmayer was an ideal fit as a guy who’d managed NFL rosters and coached in the pros and college, Brooks said.
“It just made sense to me knowing how much deficit we had to make up at Kentucky,” Brooks said. “ ... He had great knowledge and was a great teacher as well. He could impart that knowledge.”
He was fiery, too. Before instant-replay review became a fixture in the college game in 2005, Ortmayer would give officials what-for any time he felt Kentucky had been on the wrong side of a controversial call. That that happened quite often.
“On the sidelines, Steve was always getting on the officials and I kinda took that as supposed to be my job,” Brooks said with a laugh. “He got warned several times to shut up and never really got a flag, but he came about as close as you can. ... Kentucky didn’t get a lot of calls in those days.”
Ortmayer, an Ohio native, lived in Kentucky through his death. Tamme said he had a passion for the program akin to that seen from natives who end up playing for the Wildcats. It’s rare to see that, he said, and he continued admiring it into Mark Stoops’ tenure.
“Coach Ort, he flat-out loved this place,” Tamme said. “It baffles me how much he loved it. He loved being a coach here. ... For Kentucky football to be respected and to see those great wins, he loved it.”
This story was originally published March 9, 2021 at 3:42 PM.
