UK football notebook: Florida still on map for Kentucky recruiting

Amid the faxing, the analyzing and the podium chatting, there was something familiar missing from Kentucky’s 2016 signing day festivities.

Florida.

Yep, Florida. For the first time since 2003 the Cats were without a single Sunshine State signee.

When he became a head coach, Mark Stoops sent out a staff directive that he wanted to grab up players from within a six-hour radius of Lexington, something UK recruiting coordinator Vince Marrow called “the smartest thing Coach Stoops did.”

It means that UK is heavily pursuing players in Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and Georgia.

The reason is simple.

“The more times you get kids on campus, the more relationships you can build with them, the more a chance you keep them in the end,” explained UK’s Dan Berezowitz, director of recruiting operations.

Many of the players from nearby, including so many signees from Ohio and Kentucky this season, filled up the class quickly this time around.

A long-time recruiter in the state of Florida — including landing eight players (Jeff Badet, Jojo Kemp, Blake McClain, Nick Haynes and others) in his first class as a head coach — Stoops has learned that he often has to wait out players from that area.

“You have to be willing to hang around because those kids don’t make decisions a lot of times until very late,” he told the Herald-Leader this week. “We’ve got to have some room for that. Not always, but a lot of times, you have to be willing to put in that time.”

Time ran out for some Florida players this season.

But it doesn’t mean that UK is done recruiting that area of the country. On the contrary, Stoops’ newest staff members, like co-offensive coordinators Eddie Gran and Darin Hinshaw as well as wide receivers coach Lamar Thomas, all have deep ties to Florida.

Florida is still very much on the Cats’ map, Stoops said.

“I still want the core of the six-hour radius, but I think it’s very important to supplement some kids from the south,” he said, including Florida.

“I want to keep building those relationships in Florida and I think it’s important to get some players from Florida — not all — but supplementals.”

It’s been a winning plan for many schools, Rivals national recruiting analyst Mike Farrell noted.

“Everybody’s hitting Florida, and they should,” he said. “There are so many kids there that the so-called ‘big dogs’ can’t take. The kids that have had success like at Minnesota and Iowa, Nebraska.”

Farrell calls Florida the top talent state per capita, maybe even nationally.

“Florida to me quality-wise is the No. 1 state,” he said. “So it makes sense that they get down there and try to find some guys that may be overlooked and turn out to be great players.”

Hinshaw, whose recruiting base includes southwest Florida, Orlando and the east coast of Florida, noted that there are more than 700 players coming out of that state each year that have potential Division I talent.

“There’s a huge market there,” Hinshaw said, adding that UK’s sweeping moves in Ohio have been impressive, too.

When Stoops hired Gran, he noted that the assistant head coach for offense has been a fixture in Florida for decades.

“I remember very vividly being at Florida State and going on our first recruiting trips and going down to Florida. And I know Florida very well and been through there a whole bunch,” Stoops said. “There’s not a place that I walked into that wasn’t open arms to see him.”

On Wednesday, Gran said he’s never had another recruiting territory in his more than 20 years in the business. Some players he recruited decades ago are now high school coaches in Florida.

“That’s kind of neat, except it tells me I’m getting old,” he joked.

Gran hopes that gives Kentucky an edge as it makes a new push to get into Florida even more.

“It’s going to be good to be down there with an SEC team,” he told the Herald-Leader this week. “You walk in and you already have credibility and now you’re coaching in the SEC again.

“It matters. It matters to the kids and it matters to the coaches. And if (the coaches) are a part of the decision-making process, I’m going to get the edge.”

So there still may be double-digit Ohio signees for years to come — and players from Kentucky will always get first look — but don’t expect many more Florida-free classes in the future, the coaches said.

“Mark wants to try to make an impact down there,” Gran said. “And I think we will.”

No such thing as free parking

Kentucky fans won’t be paying more for their season tickets this season, but parking could be a different story.

When season ticket and parking details were released recently, many fans noted a new mandatory “donation” was a part of the purchase price.

There is a $300 K-Fund donation for parking passes in the Blue, Red and Green lots surrounding Commonwealth stadium. The Orange lot requires a $200 donation; Purple and several other surface lots further away have a $100 donation attached to them.

After looking at several options, which could have included a straight increase in parking prices or increases on ticket prices, UK opted to go the donation route, said Dewayne Peevy, deputy director of athletics.

UK needed to increase revenue because of the rising cost of program expenses and as a way to ensure blue bench-style seating could be added around the lower bowl of the stadium this offseason (except in the student section).

Officials also noted that the previous prices for parking passes didn’t fit the demand, meaning that passes sold in secondary markets were going for much higher than UK was asking.

“People were selling those passes for a lot more, so we thought there was some room to add a total cost to parking while also trying to maintain our current number of spaces,” Peevy said.

Kentucky opted to go the “donation” way for several reasons, Peevy explained.

It allows season ticket holders who had parking passes to now receive K-Fund points for purchasing the parking pass and there is tax deductibility attached to the pass.

“We felt like we needed to raise the prices for parking, but we thought a donation-based system would give us some more flexibility and allow us to grow our donor base, too,” he said.

As for fans purchasing parking passes, Peevy added: “Your out-of-pocket cost might be higher, but at least there’s some tax deductibility and you’re getting something.”

▪  For now, Kentucky believes it will maintain its current number of available parking spaces for next season despite the likely start of baseball stadium construction on that side of campus.

“Demand could become even stronger because there could be even less spaces,” Peevy said, noting that the department is trying to grab spaces back as other projects are completed.

“Right now our biggest goal is to maintain the number of spaces that we had available last year.”

Cats adding staff positions

Kentucky already added one new staff position this offseason, but it plans to hire two more in the coming days, a team spokesman confirmed on Friday.

The quality control assistant jobs posted to the UK board recently. One closed on Friday and the other closes on Thursday. The two newly created positions will help with defense and special teams.

The quality control for the offense position was filled earlier this month by former Iowa State wide receivers coach Tommy Mangino.

The three new positions, which already exist for most Power Five conference teams and NFL teams, are not part of the core assistant coaching staff of nine, but they work closely with the coordinators.

Kentucky has been bit behind the times with similar support staff positions; for instance national champion Alabama has eight “analyst” type positions, and when Gus Malzahn was hired at Auburn, he created six similar jobs on the Tigers’ staff.

They’re invaluable, UK co-offensive coordinator Hinshaw said recently. He and Gran had a quality control analyst on their previous staff at Cincinnati.

“They do a lot of technical things that help make the whole spaceship go,” Hinshaw explained. “Without those guys, a lot of the things we try to get done fast can’t get done because they’re behind the scenes getting things done for us.”

The offensive quality control assistant helps put together plays and scripts and works ahead of the coordinators to game plan for the next opponents.

“They’re putting together things that speeds the process up, which helps us be able to practice more efficient, to be able to communicate more efficiently,” Hinshaw continued.

“What we could do with technology and all of the different video equipment that we have, computer programs we have, we can speed up our process so much. And if you have enough people who can input and do the things correctly, it gets you in position obviously where you can have an advantage over opponents.”

This story was originally published February 13, 2016 at 7:31 PM with the headline "UK football notebook: Florida still on map for Kentucky recruiting."