The House of Blue

Nice work finding this article Josh Edwards!

It is very much an Arms Race in the SEC. You had better keep up or go to the cellar.

I think in addition to the $100M+ in bonding approval UK will ask for and hopefully receive from the state legislatue, I think the UK administration should earmark $3-5M per year in the budget toward discretionary capital spending. Monies that could be used to do something like build a recruiting room or do incremental and gradual training facilities. I think UK and Mitch need to re-double their efforts to mne past donation sources for football-oriented earmarked gifts.

The first step toward making such and effort successful though is to get the right man in place. In addition to seeling his vision to the players and fanbase, the next coach needs to establish a culture that makes big donors believe that UK football is a solid investment. Mitch, Capilouto and the BoT need too make some reforms also. One of the mosthelpful may be Mitch taking a more concilliatory approach to UK donors. In the past, I believe he has been more confrontational than need be with the very people who may be willing to fun U projects as some have done in basketball.

Losing is losing. This isn't the carnival and shouldn't be treated as such. The objective is not to field something amusing for fans to watch, the objective is to improve, incrementally if necessary, as a football program.

Improving the football program necessarily includes improving the worst-funded facilities in the SEC. It necessarily includes attracting the best head coach possible, which is helped by improving poor facilities and demonstrating commitment to the football program. It necessarily includes attracting the best players possible, which is helped by having a good coaching staff.

Hal Mumme had a solitary season above .500. He never finished above 4th (of 6) in the SEC East. He lost in both of the bowl games he coached. You don't get a style points for losing but scoring a bunch of points. You just get a loss.

It's only a whole lot more fun to lose 60-54 the first few times. After that, it's just another loss in a long string of losses.

I would imagine one of the first things a big name coach would look at would be the plans for improving the facilities and if the answer is "uh, we will talk about it", then he probably says no thank you. A good coach knows that competition both on the field and off the field in the SEC is a daunting thing and unless the university makes a strong commitment to improving the facilities and the way the players perceive the program around the country(yes the country) then getting a big name big result coach will be impossible. Josh, this was an eye opening thread great job finding it.

Combo credit here. ESPN for doing all the legwork and Mr. SEC for pulling SEC data and making it easy to digest.

And what jumps out at me its that half the recruiting budget and yet the CATS still compete with UGA year in and year out. And the CATS spend more than MSU, USC, & a&m and they beat the CATS like a drum. I think a little too much is put on the amount spent instead of how its spent. If you spend all your money recruiting lower tier talent then you obviously don't need more money you need better recruiters. I am for a much larger recruiting bonus, I just want it managed properly. For basketball to spend the $$ they do it's ridiculous to ask the football program to recruit 9x the kids for the same budget.

It really was a good find and very informative. Thanks again Josh.

The issue is that Ole Miss, SC, and TAMU all have fantastic local recruiting bases to draw from. They don't HAVE to spend large numbers. We should be much higher up on the list in spending, because to compete we will need to recruit regionally, super-regionally, and even nationally. That's how Tennessee built what they did in the 90's (and retain the budget for exactly that).

Bottom Line: You have to spend more to recruit kids that are farther away. Lack of in-state talent kills us.

The ptoblem is that you have these numbers that were spent and no info other than the totals. You can't make an accurate statement without knowing the details that go into those numbers. What if for example team "A" spends the most, but every summer the assitant coaches go to Hawaii to look at player then stay an additional 2 weeks with 30 members of their family in the Presidential Suite and charge to the recruiting budget. We don'tknow what the differance between our recruiting budget and everyone else besides the bottom line. Maybe other teams choose to fly to every recruit no matter the distance while some of our guys prefered driving because they didnt like flying.

When comes to what money we spend compared to other teams everyone wants to try to point out how Mitch is against football and how much is spent. Maybe that us accurate or maybe its not. Unless you can sit down with both teams expenditures and compare then we wont know. You cant say its embarrassing until you know all the facts. Thats why I say whatever the new coach wants to spend is fine so long as ge gets the job done.