UK football mailbag: Will any players use eligibility waiver to come back in 2021?
Kentucky has a chance to rise above .500 for the first time in 2020 when it travels to Missouri this weekend. With that in mind, we asked what was on your mind after a monumental victory in Knoxville.
Welcome to our weekly mailbag addressing your questions about the game behind us, the game in front of us, and anything else related to (and maybe even a couple things unrelated to) UK football. As the season rolls along, please direct your questions to me on Twitter (@JoshMooreHL) or email them to jmoore@herald-leader.com.
Let’s go!
(Note: Some questions edited for clarity).
I’m not privy to the individual situation of each player on Kentucky’s roster, but my gut tells me that no senior will “opt in” for 2021, for a few reasons. Maybe chief among them would be the possibility that they might not receive the full financial aid package they would be offered in a normal year. UK was able to accommodate returning seniors in non-revenue sports whose spring seasons were lost, but by rule it doesn’t have to maintain the same level as it did in the past for those who choose to use a waiver; football, being a bellcow, can probably afford to do the same at UK, but it’s worth keeping in mind that most athletic departments will be tightening their purse strings for a while.
Even if they’re given the same amount of aid, I suspect most, if not all seniors will be ready to move on to professional careers outside of football (head coach Mark Stoops has said this, too). On paper, getting to spend another year playing football and living the college life sounds good, and I’m sure there will be guys across the country who take that on, but it also would mean another year of lost income and equity poured into whatever career they end up pursuing. For the majority of the roster, this is the end of the road, and when you’re at the end of that road, I can see why it might be hard to turn around and drive backward from the finish line.
As far as juniors (guys like Darian Kinnard) and redshirt sophomores (Chris Rodriguez?) who could be draft eligible, I don’t know that the waiver year really changes how they’ll approach that decision. If they’ve determined they’re good enough to head to the NFL, it wouldn’t make sense to come back regardless of the extra eligibility. If they decide they should come back, it’d probably be for only one more year (or whatever their remaining “normal” eligibility would be).
Now, if you were to ask me which senior I’d like to have come back for a year, that’s a tough call; there are many good options. I’d go with center Drake Jackson, because it would provide an incredible amount of stability for a position group that will experience upheaval once 2020 is finished. Plus, he’s one of the best interviews on the team, and since this is a selfish choice, I’m gonna maximize my value.
I know it’s small consolation, but I’ll attempt to provide satisfactory answers to another one of your questions since the Braves blew a 3-1 lead in the NLDS.
It certainly helped Kentucky to go into Knoxville and dominate. For it to have a tremendous impact on recruiting, I think the Cats need to parlay it into sustained success over the Volunteers (i.e., building a win streak of their own), but it never hurts to win, regardless of the foe.
There will probably always be some level of negative recruiting by others, particularly in the SEC, since UK’s basketball program is light-years beyond the football team in terms of national recognition, but I do think players are savvy enough to understand that that really doesn’t matter; they care far more about what’s happened in the last few years, who you’ve sent to the NFL, who you’ve coached that’s similar to them, etc. A functional “negative recruiting” pitch against UK, increasingly, will focus more on particulars (“They don’t throw to their wide receivers!”) of the actual football it plays rather than past perceptions, which is in its own way something Stoops and Co. should hang their hat on.
Kentucky’s oldest active losing streak is to Alabama, whom it’s beaten only twice in school history, the last time happening in 1997. Alabama has a six-game win streak dating back to 2003 but the two don’t play every year; the Crimson Tide took the last meeting, 34-6, at home in 2016.
The Cats’ longest active losing streak, and the more significant one, is to Georgia. UK has dropped 10 consecutive games to the Bulldogs, its last win coming in 2009, Rich Brooks’ final season.
Georgia is the historically better program than UK (it leads the all-time series 59-12-2) and has finished as the top team in the SEC’s East Division in five of the last 10 seasons, but its authority over the Wildcats in that span was particularly pronounced. Last decade (2010-2019) was the first in school history that Kentucky didn’t have at least one win over the Bulldogs since their first meeting in 1939 (a 13-6 UK victory), and Mark Stoops so far has been unable to come out of that game with a victory (0-7).
Stoops needs to clear Georgia from the deck not because it has a long win streak over the Cats, but because of what it would mean for the program at large: if Kentucky in a given year is good enough to beat Georgia, then it’s probably good enough to make it to Atlanta.
Next game
Kentucky at Missouri
When: 4 p.m. EDT Saturday
TV: SEC Network
Records: Kentucky 2-2, Missouri 1-2
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Series: Kentucky leads 7-3
Last meeting: Kentucky won 29-7 on Oct. 26, 2019, in Lexington.
