In the more than 60 years that I’ve followed University of Kentucky football, the coaching job this season might be the worst I’ve ever seen, the miserable John Ray era notwithstanding. It was a season where chaos and confusion ruled the sideline, where players consistently showed a lack of discipline and preparation, and where Coach Mark Stoops and his coordinators constantly made questionable play calls.
So it would be easy to make a case in favor of firing Stoops. Nothing against him personally – he seems like a good and decent man – but he has not shown the progress in three years that would inspire confidence about UK’s future. To the contrary, he has raised questions about his ability to manage a game and coach up the talent he has recruited.
Patrick Towles has told us what he thinks.
Less than 24 hours after UK’s spectacular meltdown against Louisville had gone into the books – the Cats blew a 24-7 lead on the way to a 38-24 loss — junior quarterback Towles, who will get his degree in December, announced that instead of returning to UK for his senior year, he will transfer and play elsewhere as a graduate senior.
There’s no way to see this any other way than as an indictment of Stoops and his staff. A grandson of Jim Bunning, the Hall of Fame pitcher and former U.S. Senator, Towles could have gone to several major powers out of Highlands High School in Ft. Thomas. But he only had eyes for UK. Even as he was walking out the door, he said he would “bleed blue forever.”
Yet despite the disaster that UK football has become, I think the only prudent thing to do is keep Stoops and hope his deficiencies are correctable.
For one thing, it would cost UK $15.56 million to buy out Stoops.
I will pause here while you gasp.
Why, you ask, would UK Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart give such job security to a head coach who had accomplished nothing? Good question. He didn’t have to do it. I can understand LSU giving that kind of a buyout to proven head coach Les Miles. But Mark Stoops? Heck, it only cost Georgia $4.4 million to buy out Mark Richt, who had been on the job 11 years.
It gets worse. If Stoops were fired after the 2016 or ’17 seasons, he would still get the $15.56 million. If he were fired after the 2018 season, he would get 80 per cent of that. It drops to 60 per cent on or after Dec. 1, 2018. I stand to be corrected, but that’s how I read the amendment to his original contract.
It’s similar, but also worse, than the situation that U of L athletics director Tom Jurich faced with Steve Kragthorpe after the 2009 season. After seasons of 6-6, 5-7 and 4-8, it was obvious Kragthorpe had lost the Cardinals fan base. He just wasn’t the right fit. Still, Jurich was reluctant to fire him because they were close personal friends and he still believed in Kragthorpe as a person and as a coach.
But eventually he became convinced that, like a bad marriage, there were irreconcilable difference between the coach and the fan base. So Jurich bit the bullet and did what was best for the program’s long-term interests. He replaced Kragthorpe with Charlie Strong, the defensive coordinator at Florida who immediately put the program back on track.
Maybe Barnhart thought that if the defensive coordinator from Florida could turn out so well at U of L, the defensive coordinator from Florida State would be just as good a fit for UK. Instead, Stoops has turned out to be his Kragthorpe. But here’s the catch: It cost U of L a relatively modest $2.2 million to buy out Kragthorpe.
For the record, Kragthorpe was 15-21 after three years; Stoops now is 12-24. Since 1961, only three UK coaches have won fewer than 12 games their first three seasons – Charlie Bradshaw (11), Ray (7), and Bill Curry (11).
But let’s say that UK is willing to bite the bullet and give Stoops $15.56 million right now. Does anybody have the confidence, given Barnhart’s track record of hiring football coaches, that he would be able to identify a better coach and hire him? Many UK fans would fear that he would hire the football version of Billy Clyde Gillispie instead of the next Paul “Bear” Bryant.
Daunting challenge: next season’s schedule
Finally, there’s the daunting challenge of next season’s schedule. The Cats will open against Southern Miss, which plays Western Kentucky this week for the Conference USA title. Alabama replaces Auburn. The Florida, Tennessee, and Louisville games will be played on the road. No coach could be reasonably expected to do better than 5-7 against that schedule, so if you’re going to keep Stoops for 2016, you also should give him 2017.
After the UofL debacle, Stoops said UK needs to “get tougher,” which is virtually a self-indictment. He later pledged that the Wildcats would work harder in the off-season. I suppose that’s fine, as far as it goes, but UK needs more than hard work to begin the climb back to respectability.
First, Stoops needs a staff that looks organized, demands discipline, and teaches fundamentals. That means he should fire a number of his assistants and replace them with experienced coaches who at least will make the team look as competent as it did during the Rich Brooks era. There can be excuses for losing, but there’s no excuse for not at least looking like an SEC team.
Second, he needs to commit to the “Air Raid” offense made popular by Mumme instead of just paying lip service to it. History tells us that UK will never have the depth of quality talent that you see at Alabama, LSU, Florida, etc. They will never have the manpower to knock those teams off the line of scrimmage. But they can win by using the passing game to put constant pressure on the defense. Heck, bring in a coordinator from one of those Big 12 teams that seem to put 70 points on the board with stunning regularity.
These changes should help him reassure recruits and encourage the fans to keep the faith. Of course, it may be too late for the latter. And if Stoops has lost the fan base – as Kragthorpe did at U of L – then he has little chance to get rid of the negativity that now surrounds the program. We know that UK fans will buy tickets and support a team that’s competitive and fun to watch. But they will not support the kind of incompetence they got this season.
Finally, it was Barnhart who got UK into this mess and it’s Barnhart who needs to find the way out. Instead of retreating into his foxhole, as is his wont when times are tough, he needs to rousingly defend his choice of Stoops and the contract he gave him. He needs to make a contract with the fan base that’s as sweet as the one he gave Stoops.
If Barnhart can’t in good conscience do at least that much, then it’s he, more than Stoops, who should be sent packing.
Billy Reed is a member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame and the Transylvania University Hall of Fame. He has been named Kentucky Sports Writer of the Year eight times and has won the Eclipse Award twice. Reed has written about a multitude of sports events for over four decades, but he is perhaps one of media’s most knowledgeable writers on the Kentucky Derby.