Mark Stoops weighs in on discussion of Kentucky as one of college football’s top jobs
Mark Stoops has one of the best jobs in college football. At least, that’s what some folks believe.
The aftermath of Clay Helton’s firing at USC has drummed up discussion across the college football media landscape about which jobs in the sport are most desirable, based on a litany of measures. Kentucky found itself in the thick of that discourse Tuesday when SEC Network analyst Peter Burns tweeted his list of the top five jobs in the sport and included UK as an honorable mention, in the same category as LSU, Ohio State and Oregon (Northwestern, another non-traditional power, was also there; Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, Texas A&M and Oklahoma were his top five, in that order).
Burns elaborated on Kentucky’s inclusion in a follow-up tweet and in interviews with local media during the day. He cited a reliable recruiting pipeline, the fan base (and its realistic expectations) and a demonstrated ability to send players to the professional ranks as reasons for UK’s inclusion.
“There are just so many guys now from Kentucky in the NFL,” Burns told Larry Vaught on Tuesday. “Recruits feel like they can come to Kentucky and make it to the NFL, win games, and play for a coach and staff that develops me. A lot of coaches stockpile recruits but do not develop them. I do not know if there is a coach better at developing talent than Mark. I think players also like that he has a chip on his shoulder and his teams play that way.”
The Athletic on Wednesday published the results of a survey that asked more than 100 coaches, athletic directors and staffers what the top five jobs in the sport were. Kentucky didn’t crack its top 15, but in an addendum written by Andy Staples, he made the case for UK as the best job in college football.
“If Mark Stoops averages eight wins a year, they’ll build him a statue in Lexington,” said Staples, who noted that it was The Athletic colleague Ari Wasserman who sold him on the Wildcats. “Any of the schools on this list will run off the coach if he doesn’t average double-digit wins and doesn’t at least occasionally win the conference or make the College Football Playoff. Stoops, meanwhile, can finish third in the easier half of the SEC and live just as comfortably as his peers in those pressure-cooker jobs.”
A cynic could interpret this wave of national praise as something of a back-handed compliment — “Kentucky’s the best because the expectations aren’t through the roof!” — but for a program that was in the Southeastern Conference basement when Stoops inherited it to be in this discussion, in any form, is an indicator of how far it’s come in his nine-year tenure.
“When I got here, I can guarantee you it was a bottom 10,” Stoops said during the SEC’s weekly teleconference this week. “ ... I’ve said it since day one, and if people wanna say it’s a top-10 job, well people when I talked about taking it to national prominence when I walked in here, people laughed at me. We’re on our way. Each and every year it’s just a building block.
“It’s not easy, in this league in particular. I think you can see that. Take a good look at Texas-Arkansas. You think it’s easy building a team of national caliber in this league and taking it from 14? When I walked in here, we got beat by Vanderbilt by 30 points the year before I got here. If you take it from 14 to the top, there’s steps, there’s progressions that need to happen. And we’re taking those steps. We have no intention of slowing down.”
Staples cited increasing league revenue and a hungry fan base — “the Wildcats have a far more passionate and loyal football fan base than the it’s-just-a-basketball-school crowd realizes” — as additional reasons why UK is an attractive destination. He did offer some cation, though, in referencing Steve Spurrier’s string of three straight 11-win seasons that gave way to his eventual demise at South Carolina. In short: Don’t win too much, or expectations might get out of whack.
“Stoops can just keep driving to Ohio, signing all the players Ohio State can’t take and returning to Lexington to win between eight and 10 games a year,” Staples wrote. “That would get him fired at any school on this list. At Kentucky, it will make him a (rather wealthy) legend.”
