Stoops has outperformed Brooks on literally every metric. Maybe Brooks gets there with the support but Stoops was able to secure that support, Brooks wasn't.
Same result every season
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Which metrics? I already alluded to him picking up additional wins but I also submitted the schedule is much different now. Hell it took brooks less time to get to a bowl working under probation restrictions than it did with stoops. And I am not saying these things because I dislike stoops or am advocating making a move but I just think the ‘oh we can’t find anybody else’ crowd and build a statue forgets we just had somebody pretty similar to him. And I give stoops credit for being part of shaping what gets done with the resources and he has definitely helped with some tertiary fundraising etc but the large initial project for the stadium and facility upgrades were already slotted years before his arrival but Barnhart had them behind other Olympic sport upgrades first then the bonding process. Those upgrades were used to recruit stoops (or whoever the next coach was going to be) not stoops recruiting that project. Did he assist with the process? Absolutely. When brooks stepped down he said he was too old to keep waiting for the upgrades he had been promised
I think every team is going to accept 30 point beat downs by UGA at their place except for the Alabamas of the world.
Bottom of the barrel results is a laughably stupid description of Stoop’s results. Who would you hire that has done more than Stoops?
Thx.
23 of 24 is pretty good for OOC. i view it as taking steps. OOC is one, beating bottom to mid level SEC is 2nd (vandy. scar, mizzou). Now mid level to upper conf (miss st, uf, gotta get UT next), then elite sec east (uga). Then sec west teams. I just hope the next 3-4 steps go faster than the first 2-3.
I’m not in the position to know those things. How would I, a normal person, know every coach in America’s job resume and/if they would be interested in coming here? You, I or anyone else has no way of knowing that. This isn’t gonna be, “oh, you can’t name anyone, see.”
Did we hire any coach in our history before we fire the existing coach??? No, you fire them for poor performance and go on a search. Sometimes you make the right hire, sometimes you don’t. But to continue down the same losing road because you’re scared of a worse hire, if that’s possible, will yield the same results we got the past decade. And that’s coming up short every single year and knowing your team will come up short before the first snap of the season.
Georgia beat down Alabama last year 33 to 18. Ya think Nick Saban is interested in UK since he can't beat Georgia with that subpar Bama talent?
Alabama has multiple championships under NS. He has beat UGA. They are in the hunt for a title every season.
We are not. Terrible comparison.
Cannot see how you can compare the two, Cal inherited one of the top 3 basketball programs in the country and has done nothing since 2015, Stoops took over a team that Joker had run into the ground in the toughest football conference in the country and has made this program respectable. Not sure what you saw this season that told you this team could walk into Georgia the number one team in the country and beat them??
You have defeated your own argument. UK was on a losing road before Stoops got here. We are no longer an SEC bottom feeder or on a losing road. If you can’t discuss this without being dishonest about Stoops, then you don’t have any credibility. To hire someone who has performed better than Stoops, you would have to hire a coach from one of the four or five top programs in the country. Aside from those, you don’t have a coach that’s done anymore than Stoops.
My point is that Nick Saban has 5 star backups for his 5 star starters and still got his azz kicked by Georgia last year.
Stoops doesn't have that luxury.
It is an unrealistic comparison to expect we would compete with those programs consistently. They are the most elite football programs in the country.
Stoops is more likely to have a statue on campus one day than being fired for losing to #1 Georgia.
Do we ever have a shot at being in the title hunt every year? And are you ok with just a winning record and not actually competing? Those answers will tell all there is to know about you and your fandom.
Fired for losing to #1 UGA??? Where have been for the past decade, because it wasn’t watching our atrocious football team. It’s time to move on, appreciate Stoops for what he’s done but he’s reached his ceiling here. That’s obvious for all to see and you included.
Yes, fire the SOB. I long for the days of Jerry Claiborne (41-46-3), Bill Curry (26-52), Hal Mumme (20-26), Joker Phillips (13-24), as good as Rich Brooks was he was 39-47 here. But Brooks did lay the foundation of what this program could be and he won a couple of big games. Stoops is 71-60 currently. Do I want to take the next step, heck yeah, but be careful what you sak for, you might get it. This current staff has built a program that is competitive year in and year out. We laid an egg last night. We ain't Georgia, we ain't Alabama. It happens. I'll take what we have and hope that we can kick the door down sometime soon and beat a "big boy".
What about Dukes coach? He seems to be pretty good. The point he is trying to make is Stoops still can’t beat really good teams, just teams like Vandy, SC, Missouri. There are many coaches that could do that. He is conservative, predictable and easy to prepare for. I wish Iowa would call and he would go there. I am one that is more than willing to try someone new at this time.
Again you are defeating your own argument. The only coaches who are “in the title hunt every year” are Sabin and Smart. Who else falls into that category? By your logic every program should be firing their coach.
What has he done that Stoops hasn’t? He says if a coach isn’t competing for championships yearly they should be fired. That means virtually every program should fire their coach because only a couple of coaches meet that criteria. Why would we fire Stoops and hire another coach who doesn’t compete for championships yearly?
How about ANY year??? That better? Lol there’s several teams who have a shot here and there. We know we don’t have a shot before the season even begins simply because of who is coach. That’s what I’m talking about. There’s 10-15 teams every year that have a legit shot and it varies from year to year. We haven’t been close to being one of those teams in 11 straight years or will we ever be one of those teams under the current staff.
Coach Stoops has more than exceeded the expectations ANY UK fan had when he was hired. He has won 10 games twice in the last 5 seasons!!! He took UK Football to it's FIRST SEC winning record in over 40 years. I REALLY appreciate where our program is right now.
Having said all of that, losing the way we did last night with the MOST talent he's had here overall on both sides of the ball should be considered UNACCEPTABLE. Coach Stoops is making $9 million/year which places him in the top 10 of the entire country.
I'm not asking for UK Football to CONSISTENTLY beat UGA, but we MUST beat them MORE than once every 15 seasons!!! Now if we can beat Mizzou, the Vols, USC lite, MSU and the Dirty Birds this game will be forgotten. Bama will be tough for the same reasons UGA was.
I can guarantee you Coach Stoops feels like we SHOULD be able to win EVERY game on our schedule at this point in his tenure here!!! He is the FIRST coach since Curci that makes me believe we can too!!! But losses like last night SHOULD be a wakeup call for our ENTIRE program!!!
Having said all of that, losing the way we did last night with the MOST talent he's had here overall on both sides of the ball should be considered UNACCEPTABLE. Coach Stoops is making $9 million/year which places him in the top 10 of the entire country.
I'm not asking for UK Football to CONSISTENTLY beat UGA, but we MUST beat them MORE than once every 15 seasons!!! Now if we can beat Mizzou, the Vols, USC lite, MSU and the Dirty Birds this game will be forgotten. Bama will be tough for the same reasons UGA was.
I can guarantee you Coach Stoops feels like we SHOULD be able to win EVERY game on our schedule at this point in his tenure here!!! He is the FIRST coach since Curci that makes me believe we can too!!! But losses like last night SHOULD be a wakeup call for our ENTIRE program!!!
If you think 10 to 15 teams “have a legi shot” to win a championship each year, you are delusional. UK was a perennial door mat in the toughest conference in college football. If you think we should be competing for championships in the toughest conference in football after being a joke of a program for decades, you have a problem recognizing reality. If UK keeps winning, perhaps we can eventually build a team can do it, but it certainly isn’t guaranteed.
I'm a satisfied customer. I remember Joker and Bill Curry all too well.
Have you watched UK football? We’ve been garbage in my life besides Brooks. Mumme was fun but not good.
I didn’t specify that’s not my bad but I meant to say make the playoffs.
You don’t build up a program by being satisfied that you don’t suck as bad as you use to. You build a program by continuing to pursue greatness. No disrespect to Stoops but he’s had plenty of opportunity to take us to an elite level. He took us from really bad to bad, maybe decent a year or 2, but it’s time to move on. We are trying to get to an elite level, not continue to be better than we were in 2011.
If you consider the irrational hatred spewed toward Cal as a positive for bb then your proposal might make sense. I clearly disagree.
love him or hate him ( I do both simultaneously ) thats pretty much a mic drop post right there . Yes Stoops drives me to the point of near depression over UK football.. And its not just losing to Ga last weekend or losing to UT last year .. its looking so entirely inept in those losses . Just throw the towel in " we give up" type CRAP . Damn, losing to the upper tier is gonna happen . But losing because the team looks totally unmotivated ( Vandy last year) and unprepared is a bad look . Every win is big , you cant give away home games to Vandy . And his demeanor on the sidelines is bi polar at times .. he can off like no other on a ref for a call thats not a game changer , but on many time outs doesnt even visit the team huddle . At this past week I'd chewed that damn OL so badly his ears would still be ringing . I guess I'm old school , or dinosaur school maybe .
The only way we would have been able to make the playoffs is to be better than Georgia. Almost no one has been better than Georgia. Yet you want to fire our coach because a perennial door mat hasn't surpassed Georgia. Does that really make sense to you? It's just not a good way to run a program. Any coach worth his salt would be hesitant to take the job knowing the administration didn't support the guy who made our program a consistent winner and was fired because he wasn't able to surpass Georgia.
Furthermore, you don't achieve greatness by starting over every time you don't achieve your long term goals. Great programs were built over time by winning consistently and using that to attract better talent better than what they had before. We didn't become one of worst programs in the SEC overnight and we won't become one of the best overnight. It will be a long process.
Get rid of Stoops and save money and give Cal a raise after he wins it all this year.
This isn’t 1990, it doesn’t take over a decade to build a team that at least contends one time in a decade.
Consistent winner??? That’s laughable.
We clearly have a completely different view of what it means to be a winner. That’s ok tho, not everyone can demand that kind of greatness. Some are satisfied with mediocrity and will settle for it.
The University of Kentucky, nor the majority of our fans will stand for this atrocity.
The jump that we have taken from the first half of his tenure to the second half of his tenure is definitely better than really bad to bad/decent. We were 26-36/12-28 in the first half of the tenure and are 40-17/18-17 in the second half of his tenure here (not counting the crazy COVID year). That's definitely an above average program and better than bad/decent.
Alabama and Georgia are on another level and no other program in the SEC has been able to challenge them consistently in recent years. So, if you expect a coach to make that leap, it's just not going to happen, for a number of reasons, unless you get Saban or Smart to come here. We are 11-8 against ranked teams in the second half of Stoops tenure that aren't named Alabama or Georgia.
Now, to your point, the next step, which you call elite, would probably be a top 10 program on a consistent basis. In the last 25 years, I'm trying to think of a program that went from above average to elite consistently that was never a top program previously and can only think of 1 and maybe 2:
Clemson - would be a little bit of a stretch as they won the ACC 13 times prior to Dabo and were ranked at the end of the season 8 times in the 20 years prior to him and they had a national championship in 1981
Oregon - probably the best and only example
This idea that someone can come in and take us to the elite level is just far fetched imo. Some might call that a losing mentality, but I call it reality. We are trying to do what 1 program has done in the past 25 years, and that program had a significant advantage with Nike money.
Now, I do think that we should expect to challenge for a playoff spot on a semi-regular basis since it is going to 12 teams. I think Stoops can do that. He's already had 2 seasons in the past 6 years where 1 more win in the regular season would have gotten us in had it been a 12 team program. I would consider that challenging for a spot. We are at a point where 7 win regular seasons are a disappointment. Our floor every year moving forward should have an expectation of 8-4, which I still believe we will get to this year.
11 years isn’t a long time? What he is basically saying is, Stoops has run his course here and we won’t get better with him at the helm. He is not saying fire him because we can’t beat Ga. No one expected us to win but we all expected a competitive game. Look for a couple of more stinkers to finish out the season and then go to a crummy bowl and have a bunch of players sit out because they think they will get drafted. This is what you get with Stoops and I too don’t think it will get any better. You don’t have to worry though. Mitch’s dumbass contract with Stoops will keep him here far too long.
Being a consistent winner simply means winning more games than you lose. How is that laughable? We clearly are a consistent winner.
You are clearly delusional. Most fans are not interested in firing Stoops.
Why even compare this to Cal? But since you did, even Stoops down years lately are still above the historical average for the program. And even years like last year could be considered over achieving as far as the program is concerned.
Not so much with Cal. He's had a historically bad year a few years ago and is still sitting there underachieving year after year.
You can't fire a winning coach at a perennial bottom feeder program and expect to get better. The world, and other coaches, will look at you like you're an idiot if you make that move. What coach, who is better than Stoops, will come here when we have fired the one coach who has performed, what in the eyes of many outsiders, is a miracle at Kentucky by making us a winning program. It's just a ridiculous notion that schools like Kentucky fire winning football coaches. I'm saying that when it comes to management and strategy decisions on how to build and sustain a program, he doesn't have a clue. If he were in charge, we would be back to being bottom feeders again.
Would I like to compete for a national championship? Heck yeah I would. Would I like to be where we were for 40+ years of my time on this earth and fighting with Vandy for the worst football program in the SEC? Heck no. I guess some of us are happy and content with the gains made to this point while others think it isn't happening quick enough.
Thanks, that's a great summary. Lots to be optimistic and pessimistic about within those stats.
True, some of those teams are not what they were, but some are tougher.
UGA is now THE national power, and they didn't used to be.
UT is better now than they were during much of stoops' tenure.
I would argue that some of these teams are worse b/c UK has beaten them consistently causing those admins to make panic firings and thus destabilize their programs.
Which coach has had UKin the fight for a national championship? I mean I am disappointed in the effort, but we're still 5-1 and the one L was against eventual national champions. Step away from the ledge
