From Eli Cox yesterday in player Q&A when asked about what UK needs to do to fix the oline and use of the portal.
"I think there's a lot that goes into that. I think it goes to adapting to the new age of college football. The world has changed drastically since I entered college. The way you go about building a culture and a program has changed drastically. It was out of the norm for guys to transfer and transfer back when I first started college.
“When I was here and I was learning what college football was all about when I was a true freshman with Coach Schlarman and those guys. Drake, Luke Fortner, Mason Wolfe, Landon Young, Kenneth Horsey, Darian Kinnard, Quintin Wilson, Austin Dotson. I could go on and on down the list of guys who were in this program for 4, 5, 6 years that were all here and were roommates and were teammates and were classmates for years and years and years. And they came from similar backgrounds. Just the culture that those guys instilled and built. That's just in our room but I think it goes for the program as a whole.”
“You were able to recruit guys that matched that culture and you weren't caught playing this portal catch-up game that we're stuck in nowadays. Like Coach Stoops has said in conferences with you guys before, he's going to adapt, and you can't go about building programs the way we have before. Because clearly it’s not been working. I think there's been a drop-off and a dip and the product on the field starting really in kind of the last 2-3 years. Starting in 2022.”
“That's just something we have to learn to adapt to in college football. How can we go about bringing in talented guys but also guys that are brought into the culture of Kentucky? Being a blue collar program. Being a nasty, blue collar operation that Coach Stoops has built the success of this program on.”
“So just finding a way to get back to that while also bringing in talented guys as well. It's a multi-faceted issue. It's not an overnight fix. I think this program's in great hands and has been for 12 years."
