Kentucky football's Mark Stoops is on ropes. But don't count him out in SEC
The Wildcats are coming off a 4-8 season last year and face the same SEC schedule that made them face three College Football Playoff programs last season in Texas, Georgia and Tennessee and two more programs that were on the periphery of an at-large bid in Ole Miss and South Carolina. In all, nine programs on UK's schedule played in a bowl game last season.
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Having to go through the SEC gauntlet was among myriad reasons why plenty of Stoops' coaching peers and friends warned him not to take the job back in 2012:
It's a basketball school. Its recruiting base is too shallow. Winning can't be sustained there.
The Cats appear headed in the wrong direction, just as the program did back in 2012 when Stoops was hired, if he can't change course soon.
The same reasons why he defied the naysayers back then are the same reasons why he could turn it around this season.
Stoops saw enough potential in UK back then to take a chance. And entering a season in which the odds are once again stacked against the Cats might just be the place he needs to recalibrate what works in the program.
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There are a number of memes circulating on social media of 'motivated' Mark Stoops, which initially was a sarcastic reference to an interview he had with Kentucky Sports Radio in the spring but has now morphed into a bit of a movement.
The success he had — recording two 10-win seasons and taking the Cats to eight straight bowl games for the first time in program history — didn't come easy but was consistent enough to where Stoops may have gotten a bit too comfortable.
He had some missteps like thinking his offensive coordinator was interchangeable. The Cats had a different OC in each of the past five seasons including new Jacksonville Jaguars coach Liam Coen coaching in 2021, leaving for a year and returning in 2023 — before heading back to the NFL.
Bush Hamdan's return as offensive coordinator will mark the first time since Eddie Gran held the position from 2016-2020 that UK has had the same OC in consecutive years.
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Continuity matters, which is why just the optics of former associate head coach and recruiting coordinator Vince Marrow leaving to become the general manager at rival Louisville after being in Lexington for the entirety of Stoops' tenure was a tough blow.
But if we've learned anything about Stoops in his decade-plus in Lexington, it's that the man from Youngstown, Ohio, wasn't raised to back down from a fight.
He's landed a few punches of his own in recruiting after Marrow's exodus with 15 commitments including quarterback Matt Ponatoski, a two-sport star from Cincinnati. UK also flipped receiver Denairius Gray earlier this month after he originally committed to Auburn.
What matters, of course, is that Stoops gets some of those wins on the field next season. Kentucky hasn't had back-to-back losing seasons since posting identical 5-7 records in Stoops' second and third years at the helm in 2014 and 2015.
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He's got a greater challenge now, maybe even monumental given the schedule.
Then again, it's not much different than the low expectations he faced when he first took over the program. Stoops had unprecedented success then. There's no reason to believe he can't go out and do the same thing again.
Reach sports columnist C.L. Brown at clbrown1@gannett.com, follow him on X at @CLBrownHoops and subscribe to his newsletter at profile.courier-journal.com/newsletters/cl-browns-latest to make sure you never miss one of his columns.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentucky football: Mark Stoops might be answer to solve SEC struggles
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