‘Kentucky is home.’ From 1,400 miles away, Terry Wilson reflects on UK.
Terry Wilson is 1,400 miles from home.
The most successful quarterback to play at Kentucky during Mark Stoops’ tenure is still playing college football, but not for the Wildcats. He started fall camp last week in Albuquerque with the New Mexico Lobos, and is having a ball, but Lexington left an impression on him that’s hard to shake.
“I can’t wait to get back out there and visit,” Wilson said in a phone interview. “Kentucky is home. It’s funny, me and my girlfriend were just talking about it the other day, going through our memories on Snapchat, just looking. I definitely miss it.”
Wilson’s decision to transfer from UK and play out his additional year of eligibility, granted under the NCAA’s COVID-19 waiver, surprised some folks when it happened in January. Wilson during the 2020 season spoke as if it would be his last in the college ranks, and had it been, it was a good one on which to go out: As a senior, Wilson led UK to its first win at Tennessee since the 1980s, quarterbacked the Wildcats to their third straight bowl victory and became the first UK player to hit at least 3,000 passing yards and 1,000 rushing yards in his career.
By year’s end, though, he believed he could have done much more.
“Not to sound selfish, but I didn’t like how I ended my career,” Wilson said. “I feel like I had more to put out there.”
Remaining in Lexington for a post-football life was an option (he’d considered an accounting job), as was using his final year of eligibility at UK. Given Kentucky’s change of direction on offense and a glut of younger quarterbacks champing at the bit underneath him on the depth chart, Wilson determined that entering the transfer portal and showcasing his talents elsewhere for a year was the best bet in terms of his NFL chances.
Any hard feelings he harbored were purely self-directed. He never “bumped heads” with Stoops, and says the ninth-year head coach respected his decision.
“I wasn’t getting pushed away or anything like that,” Wilson said. “… I really enjoyed playing for Coach Stoops. I like what he believes in. He’s a good man and he really takes care of his players. I’m glad he gave me an opportunity to come play for him.”
New Mexico
The second-winningest quarterback in UK history — Wilson’s 17 victories as a starter are behind only Andre Woodson’s 19 — is about to play football for his fourth college, and third at the Football Bowl Subdivision level, but Oregon and Kentucky this is not. New Mexico, a member of the Mountain West Conference, is coming off a 2-5 campaign and looking to end a three-year bowl drought. The Lobos were picked to finish last in the Mountain Division (where conference juggernaut Boise State often reigns supreme).
The scenery is quite different, too.
“It’s not what we would be used to in Lexington,” Wilson said with a laugh. “It’s not green. We’re in a desert.”
Second-year head coach Danny Gonzales brought in Texas assistant Derek Warehime as his offensive coordinator when hired ahead of the 2020 season. Warehime, who helped take the Lobos from 10th to fourth in MWC passing offense in just one season, is the son of Nick Warehime, Wilson’s head coach at Del City High School in Oklahoma City. Nick encouraged Wilson to consider New Mexico when he decided to transfer.
It’s a pairing that should work out for Wilson, who had a leg up going into the fall due to his experience, according to Gonzales. His 25 total college starts dwarf the combined total (eight) of the other four quarterbacks who’ve started games for the Lobos, and the only other options on the roster are both true freshmen.
Wilson says he’ll be asked to throw the ball more than he was at Kentucky but that New Mexico’s play-action philosophy is familiar territory.
“I’ve been at three different schools and it’s mostly the same stuff in the playbooks, just different words,” Wilson said.
UK had been to bowl games in the two years prior to Wilson’s arrival, but had not won one under Stoops before 2019, when the Cats toppled Penn State in the Citrus Bowl. He looks forward to helping another program return to winning form in 2021.
“They’re very excited that I have experience and that I can come in and help teach these guys things that they haven’t learned, and show them, ‘Hey, this is what it takes to win football games,’” Wilson said. “I’m very excited about that. I take pride in helping those guys out and just taking my knowledge from what I learned at Kentucky and pouring it into these guys. It’s a lot of good.”
Home
Zana, Terry’s daughter, will soon be a 1-year-old. She and her mother, Kristen, moved to Albuquerque with Wilson. Having them out there was essential; otherwise, Wilson might have hung up his cleats.
He has the reins to a new football team, his family on the sidelines and the opportunity to showcase his skills to NFL teams over the course of at least 12 more games. The only thing Wilson is missing? Home.
He still follows the Wildcats on Instagram and stays in touch with former teammates, and is excited to see how the three quarterbacks with whom he shared a locker room last season — Beau Allen, Joey Gatewood and Nik Scalzo — perform during fall camp. He continues to heap ample praise upon the doctors and training staff at UK who helped him repair and rehab a torn patellar tendon that halted what was a promising start to his 2019 season.
Wherever Wilson’s football career goes after his stint in Albuquerque, he anticipates going “home” once it’s all said and done.
“I’ve had the best years of my life at Kentucky,” Wilson said. “… I’m thankful for all the opportunities I had. I’m thankful for everybody. The reporters, the fans, the community. I’m just very thankful to have been a part of something special like that.”
For now, Snapchat memories will suffice while he chases a dream in the desert.
This story was originally published August 9, 2021 at 4:23 PM.
