Originally posted by jauk11:
Originally posted by bigbluegrog:
Originally posted by KopiKat:
While everyone is talking about the Vols, I'll just take this moment to repeat my life-long philosophy of UK football struggles which is this:
Until our athletic department's leadership decides to make the ability to compete against the University of Tennessee the #1, SINGLE, front-burner priority, then UK Football will continue to struggle to be anything more than what it has been over the past 3-1/2 decades.
that is all
This post was edited on 1/18 8:34 PM by KopiKat
What else would you like to see them do that they aren't currently?
Why couldn't they have done at least a FEW of the things they ARE doing currently years ago? The answer: they could have, but chose not to, putting the money that football, THE emerging money sport, (mostly due to TV etc which was obvious to most casual observers but apparently not to our AD), was earning into expanding our basketball program which already had tons of recruiting advantages AND expanding our non-revenue sports. And it is even worse than that, most SEC schools don't make much or any money from basketball, while UK was making about $5,000,000 a year from our program at that time, but at the time women's basketball was losing 2 to 3 million a year, not much choice in women's sports since they are mandated to be supported also.
The frustrating thing IMO is that ANY money they put into football would have MADE more money, and they would have had more money for everything. Why do you think football had millions of dollars in lost revenue in 11 and 12, pretty simple to me, it was on minimum life support for the previous 10 years which not only led to lack of interest but also a concerted and costly strike for more support.
I did the research at the time, Joker's first team in 10 played Florida on the road his first year with a team that had MORE two stars starting than three stars, with a senior class from 07 that had NINETEEN two stars in it, with two walkons starting, while Florida had a TWO DEEP (not just the starters) that AVERAGED above not just a FOUR star, but a 5.9 four star. And a lot of fans thought we should upset them.
We did upset TOBC that year, that had a couple of five stars and THIRTY EIGHT four star commits in the previous four classes while we had TWO four star starters, (and I think one was injured) both JCs from California, one that made THE critical recovery in the playoff game today. In fact seven of the eight SEC teams we faced that year AVERAGED 39 four star commits, minus Vandy but including Ole Miss and MSU, that most of our fans thought we should beat routinely. Do you remember the disgust when MSU's four star Dixon ran all over us when we were supposed to beat them with a couple of four stars while they had over 20 from the previous four classes, and those 20 accentuated a major problem UK had, particularly then, because ALL those four stars were from the state of Mississippi.
There were a lot of reasons for that imbalance of power, and there are lots of reasons we are finally getting players that will give us a chance to compete in the SEC, although we are still far behind.
One of the big ones is that a lot of loyal fans sacrificed tickets in the family for generations so UK lost millions, which woke mitch up from his slumber.
