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It takes time to build

shutzhund

All-American
Nov 19, 2005
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a football team. Depth and quality don't come quickly and Stoops had to start from ground zero.

I'd have to believe he's on schedule with more to come. The value of redshirting players and allowing for physical and mental maturity is immeasurable. While we still have a way to go it's beginning too show in the team's on field performance.

There will be some dips here or there and the boo birds will come out again but that's life. For me I'm sold on Stoops.
 
a football team. Depth and quality don't come quickly and Stoops had to start from ground zero.

I'd have to believe he's on schedule with more to come. The value of redshirting players and allowing for physical and mental maturity is immeasurable. While we still have a way to go it's beginning too show in the team's on field performance.

There will be some dips here or there and the boo birds will come out again but that's life. For me I'm sold on Stoops.

Agreed. Unfortunately some feel if you can turn a basketball program around with one or two good players then you should be able to do the same with football.

Saw a discussion about UK/Stoops maybe 2-3 years ago among SECN talking heads and one, don't recall who, said something like "He'll win eventually but it'll be difficult to sustain at Kentucky." We'll see.
 
Agreed. Unfortunately some feel if you can turn a basketball program around with one or two good players then you should be able to do the same with football.

Saw a discussion about UK/Stoops maybe 2-3 years ago among SECN talking heads and one, don't recall who, said something like "He'll win eventually but it'll be difficult to sustain at Kentucky." We'll see.
I believe the writer was right it will be hard to win at Kentucky - and this has proven out. But I don't believe sustaining it will be as hard as the writer thinks. Stoops had/has a plan for recruiting. He seems to be, for good or bad - a coaches coach, which means he keeps his assistants involved and treats them with the importance they desire and respect. I said when he first came here - he could be "Kentucky's" Frank Beamer - I see nothing at this point to change my mind on this.

One of his most difficult jobs in the future will be to keep good younger coaches coming to Kentucky. I think he has/will make keeping Eddie Gran and Vince Marrow priorities at Kentucky. I also believe he will try to keep many other coaches at Kentucky he currently has on his staff - but if he succeeds, he knows that several of his assistants will be succeeding and moving along in the future. The key to that is not losing a lot of coaches in one season and being able to replace them with more good upcoming young coaches! I think UK will step to plate and pay these coaches their worth and show them that Kentucky should be their home. Stoops can and will give the program stability and that is also important for many assistant coaches who understand about the life of being a college football coach!

Go Big Blue!
 
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Agreed. Unfortunately some feel if you can turn a basketball program around with one or two good players then you should be able to do the same with football.

Saw a discussion about UK/Stoops maybe 2-3 years ago among SECN talking heads and one, don't recall who, said something like "He'll win eventually but it'll be difficult to sustain at Kentucky." We'll see.
All true. College basketball is played with 5 guys on the floor and 7-8 more on the bench. College football is played with 11 guys on the field and 70 more on the bench. This is why it takes longer to build a college football team. When you are based in a small state with fewer high school programs, that adds another level of difficulty. What Stoops and Barnhart are doing here is historically amazing. Few people have the clarity to appreciate these accomplishments until we are actually playing for the SECE title. A small group of fans have the experience, information, analytical ability to project the impact of Stoops' recruiting classes with more acumen than simply reading Rivals' class rankings. In 2014-15, you had to correctly project the impact of recruiting to foresee what was coming. But it's actually happening now. Time for everyone to be happy.
 
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I believe the writer was right it will be hard to win at Kentucky - and this has proven out. But I don't believe sustaining it will be as hard as the writer thinks. Stoops had/has a plan for recruiting. He seems to be, for good or bad - a coaches coach, which means he keeps his assistants involved and treats them with the importance they desire and respect. I said when he first came here - he could be "Kentucky's" Frank Beamer - I see nothing at this point to change my mind on this.

One of his most difficult jobs in the future will be to keep good younger coaches coming to Kentucky. I think he has/will make keeping Eddie Gran and Vince Marrow priorities at Kentucky. I also believe he will try to keep many other coaches at Kentucky he currently has on his staff - but if he succeeds, he knows that several of his assistants will be succeeding and moving along in the future. The key to that is not losing a lot of coaches in one season and being able to replace them with more good upcoming young coaches! I think UK will step to plate and pay these coaches their worth and show them that Kentucky should be their home. Stoops can and will give the program stability and that is also important for many assistant coaches who understand about the life of being a college football coach!

Go Big Blue!

Many coaches want to move up, become coordinators and ultimately head coaches. If a school comes alone and wants one of your assistants for a coordinator's position or one of you coordinator's for a head coaching position, even at a lower classification, money isn't the issue, it's opportunity. Even Bama has to deal with this and their coaching payroll is very high, couple of position coaches are making close to 1m a year. This year will be interesting at Bama, they lost a big portion of their staff, on offense their coordinator is now a head coach and 2 of their position coaches are now coordinators, All them were great recruiters so they paid more than the going rate to keep the ones who stayed. It just shows that if a coach is ambitious and he gets the opportunity to take a step up the ladder, money won't keep them.
 
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Plus, it will be easier to sustain a football program at Kentucky with the much improved facilities. Stoops and staff are doing a very good job. GO CATS!!
 
Plus, it will be easier to sustain a football program at Kentucky with the much improved facilities. Stoops and staff are doing a very good job. GO CATS!!
Certainly very true, but other SEC programs will also upgrade. The huge TV money flowing to all SEC schools gives everyone these options. It's a never ending battle.
 
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And now we are in the conversation with the other SEC schools, regardless of who they are. GO CATS!!
Yes we are, and it's great. It's nice to have a hot young head coach under contract for the foreseeable future and a hot offensive coordinator enjoying a big raise. We shouldn't forget nearly every SEC school can match or surpass these same advantages. Every SEC schools gets the big conference TV money. Most have larger instate recruiting bases than we have. Stoops will be here for a while. At the end of the day, I believe it is very important to keep Gran and Marrow here for several more years. By that time, our football program should be on another level and we should be able to survive larger changes more or less intact.
 
Yes we are, and it's great. It's nice to have a hot young head coach under contract for the foreseeable future and a hot offensive coordinator enjoying a big raise. We shouldn't forget nearly every SEC school can match or surpass these same advantages. Every SEC schools gets the big conference TV money. Most have larger instate recruiting bases than we have. Stoops will be here for a while. At the end of the day, I believe it is very important to keep Gran and Marrow here for several more years. By that time, our football program should be on another level and we should be able to survive larger changes more or less intact.

Those are 2 guys I don't think are looking to climb the ladder, both are into long careers as assistants. The concern about Morrow will be when Tressell decides to hang up the whistle, would they come calling for the head coaching position, its his alma mater and it could be tempting. I don't think he would be interested in a coordinator's position or a lateral move. Gran is hard to tell about, he seems alot like Brian Van Gorder, someone who doesn't put roots down in a place for very long. But as we have all seen, coaches contracts don't bind either party, all it does is guarantee a coach gets paid if he fails. A booster will come up with the buyout.
 
a football team. Depth and quality don't come quickly and Stoops had to start from ground zero.

I'd have to believe he's on schedule with more to come. The value of redshirting players and allowing for physical and mental maturity is immeasurable. While we still have a way to go it's beginning too show in the team's on field performance.

There will be some dips here or there and the boo birds will come out again but that's life. For me I'm sold on Stoops.

I said after the SoMiss loss last year that 1 net win every 2 years would be progress. Some accused me of having low expectations and being part of the problem for accepting mediocrity. You're correct about there being some dips.

Stoops is doing what no one else has been able to do at UK with sustainable recruiting. It may be slow improvement. (We're in the most difficult football conference.) But, the program is heading in the right direction and appears to be climbing up the SEC ladder.
 
I disagree. Stoops start with less then ZERO. The players he was left with, most could not play at Eastern. The "recruiting room" was like a open sewer. And never being a head coach, he had to build a staff from nothing. Most coaches come with a somewhat built staff from their former school. He walked in the door with 1 asst. and had to find the rest.
 
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Certainly very true, but other SEC programs will also upgrade. The huge TV money flowing to all SEC schools gives everyone these options. It's a never ending battle.

But we seem to be at an advantage over other conferences.

And the recruiting of the last 5 years seems to prove an SEC bias among quality recruits in the mid-west.

Schools to our South trash UK to Southern recruits, telling them we are the northern most school in the SEC.

Ironically, to kids in Michigan and Ohio, these same words give us an advantage.

And as to the non-ending potential of upgrades of facilities . . . . how many layers of gold-plating on the toilet seats matter to recruits.

At some point the facilities race has to hit a point of rapidly diminishing returns.

I mean, what more should we/could we do . . . . build a water park next to the stadium? Build a second stadium in Boone County, to reduce the drive for families of our mid-western recruits? (Actually, I like that idea!)

I wonder if Arkansas has recruited kids from just East of Arkansas, with the line that "your family is real close to our home games played in Little Rock."
 
Those are 2 guys I don't think are looking to climb the ladder, both are into long careers as assistants. The concern about Morrow will be when Tressell decides to hang up the whistle, would they come calling for the head coaching position, its his alma mater and it could be tempting. I don't think he would be interested in a coordinator's position or a lateral move. Gran is hard to tell about, he seems alot like Brian Van Gorder, someone who doesn't put roots down in a place for very long. But as we have all seen, coaches contracts don't bind either party, all it does is guarantee a coach gets paid if he fails. A booster will come up with the buyout.

Tressell?
 
Yes we are, and it's great. It's nice to have a hot young head coach under contract for the foreseeable future and a hot offensive coordinator enjoying a big raise. We shouldn't forget nearly every SEC school can match or surpass these same advantages. Every SEC schools gets the big conference TV money. Most have larger instate recruiting bases than we have. Stoops will be here for a while. At the end of the day, I believe it is very important to keep Gran and Marrow here for several more years. By that time, our football program should be on another level and we should be able to survive larger changes more or less intact.


IDK if id call stoops "hot" ... you can discuss that with Mrs Stoops. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

But i am really glad he, gran and marrow are here!
 
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