Absolutely right re ranking but people don't want to hear that, doesn't fit their agenda. Difference in maybe 6th in the conference and 12th is minimal, maybe as little as one player.
Possible loss of Marrow to Southern Miss.?
- Thread starter Imafan4evr_
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Marrow would do about as well as a HC as Kenny Payne did, IMO. You're exactly right. He's the cool grandpa/uncle type that kids gravitate to, but I think he could be lax on discipline.
The only " agenda" some of us have is seeing Kentucky be competitive in the SEC. Those of us who have been watching UK football since the 1960s would like to see us compete at least once with the upper echelon of the league
You say it can't be done. I say that is a self fulfilling prophecy.
A lot of you folks weren't here during the end of the Joker era arguing with PEPSIMAN99 about how we would be doomed if we let a recruiter like Joker walk.
We can, and will, have better years ahead after Stoops. Thank you for your time and efforts, but we have to move on.
We can, and will, have better years ahead after Stoops. Thank you for your time and efforts, but we have to move on.
We played UGA for the SEC East title a few years ago. The point isn’t that we can never compete, it’s that we aren’t going to ever consistently recruit like UGA or Bama. Given that fact, we are actually recruiting in the vicinity of our reasonable ceiling. Can we do better? Marginally, sure. Does the recruiting acumen of Stoops and Marrow mean they shouldn’t be gone at the end of the season? No.
I’m all about moving on from Stoops, it just drives me nuts that we as fans have to start denigrating the legitimate success he’s had here to somehow justify wanting him gone. He’s the best coach 95% of fans have ever had. We’re recruiting about as good as we likely ever will. He’s also gotten complacent and clearly doesn’t have the edge anymore and it’s hurting the program. Those points can both be true at the same time
I have heard marrow is always looking for any way to make more money. Maybe he is using the bad times for leverage to get more $$ out of uk.
We are 4-6 and probably will miss a bowl game. Did you expect a parade for Stoops lol.
Btw I don't hate Stoops. I don't even know him personally to hate him. I appreciate what he has done for UK for most of his coaching term here. But it's definitely time for a change. Pretty solid recruiter especially for UK standards and seems like a good blue collar guy...but he can't coach a good offense to save his life.
I think k UK is deeper, but the only one I can say would
I dont think Vandy is more talented than UK except QB, who is just a player and plays better than he probably should. UK is more talented overall, but weren't that day. I think OM is more talented than UK, with a coach several schools would like, but they weren't better than UK that day. Upsets happen every week.
Grumpyolddawg, I love you man, BUT, losing 2/3 to Vandy, 3 straight to S. Carolina, 10/12 to UT, 12 in a row to Georgia, getting blasted by a bad Florida team, that is not what you call an "upset".
That is a bad trend.
If this was Georgia, Georgia fans would be at Kirby's door with the torches. You guys ran off a coach who AVERAGED 10 wins per year. If losing games like that are not good enough for Georgia, it should not be acceptable to UK fans who want better for our football program.
This "upset" narrative is a pathetic excuse for losing games we shouldn't be losing 12 years into CMS tenure.
I wouldn't be happy for sure with those results. But if that happens we would be stuck, 134m buyout would be hard to come up with. Richt wasn't fired so much for the wins. I posted the details here one day, sure people wanted to win a championship, but being in the hunt kept most happy. It was his unwillingness to make changes more than losses. And when he made one he made sure it was a bad one.
I sort of disagree. We don’t know what the TEs can really do because they just aren’t part of the game plan.
Now replace Mark Richt name with Mark Stoops in your post and you will get exactly where most Cat fans are right now.
Even when CMS makes a change, it turns out to be for the worst.
They never are. I bet we have more penalties than catches by the TE room this year.
Probably the biggest news out of this is that KSR actually credited someone else for their reporting.
Who should we beat in SEC recruiting. Bama, Auburn, Tennessee, A&M, Texas, Oklahoma, Ole Miss, LSU, USC, Florida, Georgia are probably always recruiting better than us. That puts us at 12th automatically. USC has a good in state base.
Big Dog leaving is actually a good omen. I don't think Stoops sticks around without his recruiting crutch.
Southern Miss is horrible, I guess he can go there for his retirement. But I could see him being offered by Ohio State as a Chief Recruiter Position. Sends him home with a chance for a championship.
It's a tough situation to be in. Not everyone wanted change, and quite a few were anti Kirby. Richt did some good things at UGA, But when illness struck his family, winning football games just wasn't a priority for him, can't say I wouldn't be the same way, but I was never a P5 head coach either. If UK needs/wants a change by all means they should make one. But because of demographics and location it won't be easy for a new coach to climb the ladder without bigNIL which UK may have.
Being 25th puts you in range to play with teams. It’s not going to be the same roster as teams always in the top 5 but it’s should be good enough to compete and sneak up on somebody and the teams that are a few spots ahead etc is negligible difference. Teams that can coach, evaluate, and manage rosters are going to win most consistently in their pack of teams that recruit where they do.
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So your position is we can't improve recruiting. Why stay in the conference at all. Can't never did ANYTHING.
If he leaves I wish him the best, he has been a great recruiter at KY and getting away from Stoops and a losing program.
Reality is reality. Think about it from a basketball point of view. Ole Miss isn't likely to ever out recruit Texas or Tennessee or UK. They can try but it won't happen, not regularly at least.
What they can do is position their recruiting closer the top programs. UK may be 12th in the SEC but 20-24th nationally. We always had a couple of problems in football. We have almost no in state recruiting base for top tier players but Stoops has started getting most of the ones we have. We have little program success in football. That goes back nearly 75 years. Our facilities are better but still don't compete with top programs.
Now we have an even bigger problem. Money. There is almost nothing we can do about that. UK doesn't have dozens of super rich boosters and our fanbase, in general, is behind national income averages. Finally, we are a small market school as well and there is nothing we can do about that either.
So, we have a football program with few easy recruiting targets that has a losing history in football and now that money is king in recruiting, we have both a small market and a poor state.
Now, explain to me this fantasy you have that some new coach can overcome all these hurdles. Stoops has done the impossible with our recruiting and you guys think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.
Y'all may succeed in running Stoops off. I'd sure leave if I were him. He isn't perfect but he's done so much for our program yet the ingrates have little appreciation for what he's done.
I'll remind all of you of this when we hop back on the perennial coaching carousel, always failing but always ready to rehire and roll those dice.
If the decision makers at UK feel it's time for a change then by all means it's time to make one. But whoever they bring in better be someone who can bring the the recruiting from the 10-12 range to the 6-8 range then the results will be about the same. Bama wasn't on top for so long because Saban had some secret formula, they were on top because they had better players.
I know Sumrall is the choice of the fans, and he could be the guy to get UK over the top and where it's fans want to be. His resume is very good and says he deserves a chance.
Yep. And again, I’ve repeatedly said that stoops has earned his shot at righting the ship on paper. Even though he doesn’t seem to be built in any way for the current state of the game on or off the field. But his lack of energy mentally puts him in a spot that it can’t be fixed if that can’t change and it doesn’t feel like it can. It’s not that we’re trying to get over the top as much as it’s that we’re in steady decline for 3 seasons relative to having personnel improvements we’ve had. It takes more than what we’re getting now in order to perform at the same level. The new schedule format exposes that.
Stoops gets Top 10 coaching money. The results are unacceptable with that level of pay.
Now, explain to me this fantasy you have that some new coach can overcome all these hurdles. Stoops has done the impossible with our recruiting and you guys think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.
I am not knocking your perspective here but if it can be stated that Stoops has done the impossible, then is that the final bar and we can go no higher? I always hoped we would have success and he has breathed life into a traditionally down program. So I am thinking there are always improvement avenues, at least I am hoping.
Also, you listed Tennessee as a recruiting bar of which Ole Miss will never reach. How did they do it since they have traditionally not been a blueblood? I guess I am asking that if UT can do it in bball, shouldn't UK be able to do it in football?
Appreciate your perspective here.
I threw in the towel this year on Stoops. I was a pretty adamant Stoops supporter, but this is year 3 of an obvious decline imo. I don't really look at in conference rankings as much as others do in recruiting. I look more at the gap between us and other teams in conference and the improvement in our classes:
- 20 years ago (2005), our average star ranking was 2.15. That was ahead of 1 team (Vandy) and within .25 of 0 teams. So, 10 teams had classes with an average star ranking of .25 or more above ours.
- 15 years ago (2010), our average star ranking was 2.74. That was dead last and within .25 of 3 teams....Vandy, MSU and Arkansas. So, 9 teams had classes with an average star ranking of .25 or more above ours.
- 10 years ago (2015), we were at 2.95. That was ahead of 1 team (Vandy) and within .25 points of 3 teams....Mizzou, MSU and Ole Miss. 8 teams had classes of .25 or more above ours.
- 5 years ago (2020), we were at 3.43. That was ahead of 6 teams and within .25 of 3 teams. Only 4 teams had classes .25 or more above ours.
- 4 years ago (2021), we were at 3.11. That was ahead of 3 teams and within .25 of 5 teams. Only 5 teams had classes .25 or more above ours.
- 3 years ago (2022), we were at 3.5. That was ahead of 8 teams and within .25 of 1 team. Only 4 teams had classes .25 or more above ours.
- 2 years ago (2023), we were at 3.47. That was ahead of 6 teams and within .25 of 3 teams. Only 4 teams had classes .25 or more above ours.
I understand there is the transfer portal and such, but when you look at the 20, 21, 22 and 23 classes that have comprised the past 3 seasons (22, 23, 24) compared to the rest of the SEC (and OOC opponents), we are underperforming. The talent disparity between us and most out of the SEC (outside of the top 4) is not a huge gap anymore on paper. Our floor should be 8-4/4-4. Our ceiling is probably 10-2/6-2 in a season where the schedule works in our favor (i.e. Ole Miss this year...they play 5 of the 6 teams with the worst conference records right now). But 10-2 will get an SEC team into the playoff. I don't think that's being unreasonable.
I understand that position but I believe he's paid for the difficulty level in coaching UK.
Who is this coach who has overcome the obstacles? At best I think UK can have the occasional 10-2 season. In those years we will have gotten lucky with both the schedule and odd bounce of the ball.
I only used the basketball analogy to make a point. Its much easier to change your fate in basketball.
Disagree with that. That is truly a different take. It’s hard to coach here when you are a lousy coach. Stoops ought to be at $5 million tops. Mitch panics and offers ridiculous contracts.
Yep thats the truth. Made this point in earlier thread . . . we have enough real talent to compete and enough of it for depth as well. What we need out of our coaches is to be more of a difference maker themselve all around vs the other staffs. Be better teachers, developers, schemers, game managers and play callers. Just be a little better than what you have been and we can win with the talent we have. Top 25 classes should at least be performing at top 25 levels and threatening to do more at this point.
True but don't undervalue the difficulty inherent in coaching UK. In the past the job was known as a career killer. You arent getting a decent coach here without paying for the difficulty and career risk.
The coach you mentioned is from the quote I took from your initial post. The point I was trying to make is where you said Stoops has done the impossible. If that is the case, seems like we have some room for improvement. In other words, if Stoops has done the impossible getting UK to where they are now, then maybe, just maybe we can go higher. I know the deck is stacked against us but with all that we bash Stoops for, I think he wants the skids greased in order to get the best players here as much as we do. Problem is, UK football just has not had much experience in getting the be$t player$ in here like the re$t of the $EC...
A great point that occurred to me that bizarre 5/6 hour time frame, last November after the U of L game.
A Coach paid among the Top 10, with his second mediocre seven win season just completed, seriously considering a switch to a conference rival, which no real attachment to that program?!?!
Texas A&M ain’t Notre Dame (Mark’s family is Catholic), ain’t Iowa and ain’t very close to Youngstown.
Barnhart had to feel pretty miffed, as far out-on-a-limb as he went with Stoops’ last contract.
Even were we to upset Texas, a 2-6 SEC slate is pretty darn pathetic.
The ironies do abound: Stoops early in his career didn’t whine about facilities, he campaigned in a positive fashion and changes were made, and tens of millions were spent.
In a strange sense, our fan base is doing exactly what he told us from 2013 through 2017: expect better results!!!
He and his early teams used the slogan “why not Kentucky.” When we beat PSU and then Iowa on New Years Day, led the nation for a period in OOC wins, achieved a significant bump in our recruiting rankings, our players’ draft status and established strong attendance, almost all of us were on board for the ride.
The step-back in success has frankly been a shock, and only a steady, and confident voice is going to convince us there might still be a light at the end of the tunnel. Implying that NIL money has been lacking appears disingenuous given our successful transfers from Ole Miss, Miss State, Nebraska, Penn State, Georgia and even UT and Alabama.
I’m not so sure that an insufficient amount of money has been spent: it looks instead like it might have been unwisely spent.
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