Stoops just doesn’t feel like he has the energy for the job anymore. If he’s expecting to just coach some kind of big traditional school with a ton of donors already in place then he’s dreaming. He’s going to have to do the legwork. This isn’t Alabama, Ohio State etc with a bunch of donor infrastructure already in place. If you don’t have the energy to deal with a job like Kentucky then you don’t need to be here. You’re the 8th highest paid coach in the country, come on. There are coaches with far less doing more because they choose to run creative offenses and be aggressive. You’re not going to out-Alabama, Alabama with athletes at Kentucky. It seems like Kiffin and Drinkwitz have realized that. Stoops, not so much.
I mean, he should dang well know that at Kentucky you’re going to have to be creative and innovative. Look at programs that punch above their weight, that’s how they do it. If he can’t win without a blue blood NIL budget then he’s not the coach for Kentucky because we’re never going to have that money. That doesn’t mean we can’t have a top 25 program on a yearly basis though. We can absolutely have a program like Ole Miss or what Mizzou is looking like it’s turning into. There’s absolutely no reason why Kentucky can’t do that, but we need a coach that has some energy and creativity and doesn’t point the finger at someone else every time he fails.
