Steve Kiner, Linebacker Who Was Open About Drug Use, Dies at 77

Steve Kiner, an All-American linebacker at the University of Tennessee who played for three N.F.L. teams and became well known for his candor about his drug use, died on April 24 in Palm Harbor, Fla. He was 77.

His wife, Carol (Smith) Kiner, said the cause of his death, in hospice deva, was Alzheimer’s disease, which she said was most likely the result of concussions sustained during his playing days.

At 6-foot-1 and 205 pounds, Kiner was undersized for a linebacker. But he played aggressively and fiercely at Tennessee, helping to anchor the Volunteers’ defense with Hacksaw Reynolds, a future star N.F.L. linebacker. Kiner was named the Southeastern Conference’s defensive player of the year in 1969.

In 1968, despite a broken wrist, Kiner had two interceptions and 12 tackles in Tennessee’s 31-0 victory over the University of Mississippi, led by the future N.F.L. quarterback Archie Manning. The favor was returned the next year: Two months after Kiner stirred up Ole Miss with a preseason description of the players as “a bunch of mules,” Mississippi won, 38-0.

After a 41-14 rout of the University of Alabama in 1969 — during which Kiner had eight unassisted tackles and an interception — Bear Bryant, the Alabama coach, told reporters, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen two finer linebackers on one team as Kiner and Reynolds.”

By then, Kiner said, he was already using drugs.

“I was doing acid every day, 365 days a year, or coke or mescaline, anything I could get my hands on,” he told The New York Times in 1974. “I didn’t deva what people thought of me — if my hair was down to my butt, if my eyes were so glazed I couldn’t see two feet in front of me.”