The House of Blue

Something that should be noted regarding Spurrier going to South Carolina is that there is a wealth of homegrown talent in that state that Kentucky lacks. Taking an opportunity to build a winner is more attractive when a significant piece to the puzzle is already in place or easily obtained.

I don't buy that argument. South Carolina has 21 commit's so far in this years class and a grand total of 4 of them are from in the state of South Carolina.

The geographical advantage was once a much bigger and more important factor than it is now but with high speed internet, You Tube, mass transportation, and the availability of inexpensive video production equipment, plus that fact that the pool of talent is much larger now that it has been before, it is not that big of a deal.

But, I think it is still fair to state that the ole ball coach built South Carolina into what it is by making use of its exceptional homegrown talent. Whether or not he still makes as much use of it as possible now that he has built it up does not mean that it was not a part of the foundation he built upon or attraction for accepting the challenge.

Brooks has seen it. Everyone sees it. Unless UK is willing to pony up money it's not going to happen. UK makes good money from football. They should see it as an investment to pay for a good quality coach.

I'm not ready to switch out Joker yet. I don't think he's had the opportunity to show what he can do. However, I was not really for his hiring in the first place. Well, at least not as the head-coach-in-waiting. We should have done a search. I think there are more well qualified people out there we could have considered.

UK's not the one that needs to pony up. It's donors and boosters.

That's a chicken or egg deal. Boosters are not going to put money into it until they see commitment from UK. UK has a lot of cash coming in from football. They could stand to go for a decent coach if it will get the gravy train running.

You may be right about that, but one thing is certain: it won't happen without the funding. For UK to compete with the "big boys" in this league, it's got to start from deep-pocketed boosters who desire to see the program get to the next level. Withholding it (presumably due to MB?) doesn't exactly make sense to me. is the gpal to run him off? I think the University powers that be are pleased with his performance, so I don't see that as a likely scenario.

Agreed. He and hotdice are rays of sunshine for the board.

I am right there with you. My two tix cost $1600 and I couldn't even get anyone to go with me to see the Florida game, everyone knew it was going to be non competitive, just like always, even though as it turns out, Florida is not really even a top ten team this season.

I remember 20 years ago that CM Newton got Claiborne to work on the fund drive for the Nutter Fieldhouse after he retired, and called it "the last piece of the puzzle". Well I ponied up (my name is on the wall of donors in there), but nothing changed other than ten more years of bad football.

Just in the last ten or twelve years, we have added a larger stadium, new practice fields (thanks, Tim Couch), luxury boxes, renovated coaches offices, etc. At some point, you have to step back and ask if the problem TRULY is lack of money and facilities, or is it something more basic like lack of vision/leadership in the AD office coupled with years and years of dull and downright bad coaching hires.

Bingo!

Jeff when we hired Joker we raised our out of pocket for Coaching alone over 1M per year, closer to 1.3M and that was promoting within for a Coach who had not one minute of HC'ing experience. Rich had ask for 500K to improve his staff and wanted to stay 2 more years. There's no reason to believe had Rich Brooks been given the exact increase in funding to enrich his coaching staff we wouldn't have seen our program move forward at least another half step possibly a full one in the two additional years he desired. Plus that could have given Joker a little more time to observe and learn giving him a better opportunity at success in the long run.

But for whatever reason Mitch and Joker couldn't wait & let Rich leave on his own terms(which IMHO he had earned). After watching the program the past year and half it's obvious to me Joker wasn't near ready and Rich wasn't given the time to prepare the program to the best possible point to enable Joker his best chance at success.

As boosters are concerned and them putting up the money......I don't see that happening with the current Coaching staff due to what we've witnessed since the change was made, but I do believe there are boosters and supporters who are willing to help, just not now with this staff and the disorganization that seems to have set in. Those folks want to see something positive in practice and on the field on game days.

All one needs to do is observe the sidelines during a game to see the negative change and disorganization that has occurred in a very short period of time, let alone viewing a practice or two like in B-Ham last year before the bowl game. There was no resemblance to the practices and organization we had just a single year before.

I was all for continuing the current positive era we had going by promoting from within(that was the whole idea), but not only has that era stopped, it seemed to begin to slide downward almost from the day the change was announced. Yes we brought in some good recruiters, but somewhere along the line it seems we forgot we must have coaches who are able to coach kids up. Maybe we have them, but if we do they must be allowed to do their jobs, something we've yet to see happen. We also must utilize our talent by running a system that takes advantage of the positives, not exposing our weaknesses.

"Yes we brought in some good recruiters, but somewhere along the line it seems we forgot we must have coaches who are able to coach kids up. "

You said a mouthful right there. I'm beginning to wonder if our ace recruiter hires came at the expense of seasoned game coaches. Take T. Martin for example. It is undeniable that he is one of the best up-and-coming recruiters in the game and gets glowing reviews. However he is coaching the WRs and I can honestly say it is the worst group of D1 receivers I've ever seen assembled. Ever! There is talent there but they are underachieving big time. So is it smart to put a young, former QB with no former WR coaching experience in charge of a group of inexperienced WRs? Isn't our head coach a former WR who has played and coached the position for decades? Why isn't his impact being felt there? If the team's most glaring weakness happens to be one of the head coach's primary areas of expertise, what does that say about his influence and ability to lead?

Just more food for thought. I think we all want UK to get over the hump but we need to see signs of improvement, not backsliding. I cannot find any valid excuses to ever be in the bottom 10 nationally in so many offensive categories. Poor playcalling, poor schemes, poor coaching up, poor execution, poor recruiting. It is simply inexcusable given that our coaches make very respectable salaries.