Over 60% of college football teams make a bowl game now, but a ton of people on this board think that UK making a bowl game is something worth celebrating. Celebrating bowl eligibility in the 11th year of Stoops’ tenure while he’s getting paid $8.6 million is embarrassing.
Same result every season
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It truly is! We can attract bigger names with that kind of money and ESPECIALLY that kind of money with fans who demand the bare minimum. Best job in America.
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Ten years ago, our program was AWFUL.
Now, we have a better program than South Carolina, Mizzou, Louisville, Vandy, Miss State, and Florida.
We are on par with Tennessee (though I think it is a fault of Stoops that we haven't beaten them more), Ole Miss, A&M.
We are worse than Georgia, LSU, and Alabama.
I'm sure that Stoops is trying to do more to beat the programs on our level and climb the ladder, but it's hard.
It really is this simple. Very few teams EVER beat Georgia or Alabama. Keep trying, keep improving, keep tweaking the system. Eventually, it will happen.
Now, we have a better program than South Carolina, Mizzou, Louisville, Vandy, Miss State, and Florida.
We are on par with Tennessee (though I think it is a fault of Stoops that we haven't beaten them more), Ole Miss, A&M.
We are worse than Georgia, LSU, and Alabama.
I'm sure that Stoops is trying to do more to beat the programs on our level and climb the ladder, but it's hard.
It really is this simple. Very few teams EVER beat Georgia or Alabama. Keep trying, keep improving, keep tweaking the system. Eventually, it will happen.
9-10 win regular seasons in my opinion. Certainly not something over half of college football also accomplishes.
He has done that twice. How many times did UK do it in it's history before Stoops?
To add some additional information to the discussion. Here is a list of SEC schools and number of times since 2013 they have won 9 games or more. That includes bowl games. I didn't have time to exclude bowl games. I picked 2013 just because it's 10 years of history even though it hurts Stoops because he was still building from a crap program he inherited in 2013.
Alabama - 10
Georgia - 7
Florida - 4
LSU - 4
Miss State - 4
Ole Miss - 3
Tennessee - 3
Texas A&M - 3
Auburn - 2
Kentucky - 2
Missouri - 2
South Carolina - 2
Vandy - 1
Arkansas - 0
Given where Stoops started, I don't think we are doing that poorly against the rest of the SEC based on your criteria. Also given your criteria, well over half the SEC would rarely have much to celebrate.
Worse than all but 2 schools in the SEC. And yes Stoops was still building in 2013, I get that.
5 SEC West teams have been able to win 9 games 3 times or more in the last 10 years and that’s been by far the more challenging division.
Stoops doing that twice was impressive the 2 years he did it. I don’t think he’s a total failure here, but I think we could do better. And we should expect better. The program is better now than it was 20 years ago and that’s a credit to Stoops. It’s beyond time for him to stop getting credit for being better than Joker Phillips.
I think Stoops talks a lot about how our program is better, and he expects us to be competitive with top tier teams in SEC; but I think he still expects to get credit for “just” making bowl games consistently. I think there is a little bit of hypocrisy there somewhere? Maybe that’s not the right word? It’s like the expectations he puts on the program don’t really align with the expectations he thinks the fan base should have of him. Maybe I’m off base. Just a thought.
I guess the big question, based on your criteria, is whether 3 times in 10 years is acceptable? Is 4 times acceptable? Only 2 schools have done better than that. Given that Stoops has done it twice in the last 5 years, maybe in another 5 years he will have done it 4 times in a 10 year period. Virtually none of those schools were as bad as UK when Stoops took over. I guess the point is how reasonable is your measure for a coach at UK? It seems like most of the conference isn't meeting your expectations.
Why can't both be true? Why can't he expect his players to compete at the highest level and also expect credit for the job he has done here? Just because he expects his players to do better doesn't diminish his past accomplishments.
This is spot on.
Coach Stoops is making top 10 coaching money, so when he tries to compare his results with those coaches in the past, it's nothing but a copout.
I am ELATED that we are no longer a doormat and I am MORE THAN appreciative of the job he has done to get us where we are. But, the time is NOW to stop using the past as an EXCUSE for getting embarrassed in BIG games.
3 times in 10 years with the resources he has and what he’s getting paid isn’t expectable. And it hasn’t been acceptable at the other programs either because they’ve all gotten rid of their coaches other than Alabama.
9 wins is a good seasons. Doesn’t mean 8 is a total failure and it often depends on the year and how the schedule shakes out. With realignment we don’t really know how it’s going to look, but I’m guessing the SEC slate is only going to get harder for us.
Comparing the level of recruits each of the coaches brings in each year, Stoops is exceeding expectations with flying colors.
There are probably some exceptions where the program went downhill after winning 9 games, but most haven't fired the coaches who won 9 games. Florida's coach, for example, left the program. South Carolina's coach left the program. Miss State lost two coaches who won 9 games. Generally, schools don't fire coaches who win 9 games twice unless the program starts to fall on hard times or the coach is involved in some rules violations or unethical activity.
Also, changes coaches hasn't materially improved the performance at many of those schools because they have still only won 9 games or more a few times in the decade. UK looks very comparable to most of the league in spite of starting way behind most of the league.
The op sucks. Basketball only fans are $.10 a dozen. I’ll die on that hill.
Being bad for a few years for the greatest program of all time is slightly different than a football program like Kentucky being bad for 60 years.
But you're moving the goalposts. Your criteria doesn't say 60 years. Nevertheless, I agree that right now it would be easier to find a coach to take us to the next level since we're hanging around the top 25 than it would have been 10 years ago.
I’m not moving the goalpost. I responded to that poster on why Georgia and their success under Kirby wasn’t comparable to Kentucky.
I then said, “A better comparison might be Kansas State under Bill Snyder, Wisconsin under Barry Alverez and VaTech under Frank Beamer. Those are the 3 off the top of my head that I can think of that took a perennial lower tier school and made them into a consistent winner. Can you think of others?”
Alabama is not a perennial lower tier school.
UGA will beat everyone on their schedule this season.
Ya'll act like it's the end of the damn world to lose to the #1 Team and 2 Time Defending National Champions....and on their home field. Ya'll drank the Kool-Aid and thought because UGA had struggled in every game, that they were ripe for an upset, but UGA put all the pieces together when they played us. It was bound to happen...we were just the unlucky ones to be next in line.
Time to move on and cheer this team on this Saturday night!
Ya'll act like it's the end of the damn world to lose to the #1 Team and 2 Time Defending National Champions....and on their home field. Ya'll drank the Kool-Aid and thought because UGA had struggled in every game, that they were ripe for an upset, but UGA put all the pieces together when they played us. It was bound to happen...we were just the unlucky ones to be next in line.
Time to move on and cheer this team on this Saturday night!
If you read my other post after that in this thread I explain. It’s that we can have 2 things true. Stoops is a solid coach that has accomplished much at UK relative to history. But Brooks is an easy, not so distant comp to point to. And while stoops is solid I also don’t agree with the ‘nobody else can do this’ crowd. Not at this point anyway. And I don’t mean it as though he should be run off. It is both true that he has a good UK record, good SEC record, etc…but it is unfair to compare him completely to the past of UK history when we were at the very bottom, sans Vandy, of providing tools to build a program with. Due to the ramp up of sec tv contracts we have competitive facilities and such that we’ve never deployed here. I mean between Stoops and our o/d/recruiting coordinators we pay almost 14m/yr just for 4 people and an ad that hands out raises and contract extensions to coaches in all sports like candy. Just ask Mingione. The next person may or may not have success but to act as though we won’t have a shot in the open marketplace when the time comes is a bit overdone. And I bring up brooks just to say that with his resource commitment and facing a top 20 UL and the East as it was at that time I don’t think stoops does any better. Stoops would recruit marginally better and Brooks would out coach stoops.
And lest we forget, Brooks was an ‘8th option fall back considered aged out, washed up, non geographic fit that was a bit on the cheap and just coming to cash a check for the end of his career’ when the search got to him.
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Yep. I Virtually always say he gets credit for many things but it’s also true he is the only UK coach in those 60 years to have been given tools to work with and especially now during the transfer portal era where if you know what you’re doing can bring kids to uK that never would’ve been here if it was the old system. Can you imagine if we had played the last few years with qbs we had recruited out of hs? I always refer to brooks as an easy comp and stoops is only a win a year better than him but brooks had no facilities to recruit with or staff salaries. He finally gave up and said he was too old to keep waiting for the stuff to come. I also believe stoops benefitted from the power shift to the west in sec. Lots has come together at the right time in the last several years….some do to him, some not.
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