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Athlon Sports’ 2025 College Football Preview print magazine is now available at retail racks or online depending on your preference.
It’s almost always one of the earliest college football previews and offers insights on every college team.
One feature this year has SEC coaches commenting on other SEC teams. However, it is all anonymous because almost every coach is paranoid about providing bulletin board material and to avoid cliches.
Therefore, Athlon Sports gave coaches the opportunity to comment without being identified.
Four coaches who will be playing Kentucky this year offered these insights:
— “The recipe for Kentucky’s success under (Mark) Stoops isn’t there right now, unless they hit on every portal guy they brought in and (quarterback Zach) Calzada is significantly better than he was the last time in the league.”
— “They weren’t aggressive or physical on the lines last season. They didn’t really play like those Mark Stoops teams that would beat you up.”
— “This is a make-or-break year for the future of this program. He’s got a very friendly contract that makes him hard to fire, but right now it’s hard to look at the overall roster here and think they’re keeping pace with programs like Vanderbilt and South Carolina, who changed with the time.”
Obviously, not encouraging for UK football. Start with “recipe for Kentucky’s success isn’t there right now” with UK already coming off a 4-8 year. No one can dispute the lack of aggressive, physical play last season.
The claim that UK head coach Mark Stoops is not going to “radically adjust to win in this NIL and portal era” is concerning but one UK fans have also been wondering about. Finally, worrying that UK might not be keeping pace with Vanderbilt and South Carolina sounds like doomsday for the Cats.
So even though the comments are from anonymous sources, it’s hard to say any of them are wrong and hopefully might provide some bulletin board material for Stoops and his players.
11 Responses
The UK FB program shut down a few seasons ago and now it’s even obvious to those who did not see it or just hoped it wasn’t really happening.
4-8 is confirmation the wheels the program regressed to the chjoker days, and that is ever so sad.
Stoops refused to yield his co trail over every OC until he now is returning a loser OC & loser OL coach. The 4-8 record makes it hard to deny that the offense disappeared.
A new and REAL OC and OL coach are needed to even just begin to turn the program around. That will require a new HC and the UK AD can be given full credit for giving Stoops insurance against getting fired just as he did with the BB coach while UK could not get past the 1st game of the Big Dance.
Stoops did great for a decade and then he failed big time!
UK is at least 4 years away from elevating into the middle of the SEC again, and even more years as long as the AD, HC, OC & OL coach are at UK.
Barnhart has done it again…overpaid another has been coach and gave him a contract that makes it hard to fire him. When will Kentucky’s Board of Regents realize that the weak link in the athletic department is Barnhart? We are now the "Vanderbilt" of the SEC.
Barry: You’re absolutely right. But, I think the Board of Regents have known for sometime the Stoops situation and they don’t care. As long as UK gets its cut of the SEC TV and tournament money, The board is quite content to leave Barnhart where he is.
And if Barnhart had let Stoops leave after a 10-1 season, the fans would be crying that he didn’t care about football!! Barnhart was in a tough situation. If Stoops had held it together and kept things improving, Barnhart would be praised. Stoops failed and now people want to blame Barnhart.
It is Stoops that is not keeping up his end of the bargain, plain and simple!!
Its like the one coach said this is a make or break year for Stoops. Its trickled all the way down through the program. While other teams have 10-15 commits for the 2026 class we have one. That tells me some recruits don’t think Stoops will be here to long. Its almost like Stoops is trying to leave Kentucky the way he found Kentucky. Anything he ever did as a coach has been swept away by 3 terrible seasons. Louisville has passed us up in football. He state of Kentucky is proving it. Put of the top 10 recruits in Kentucky Louisville has 8 of them. That’s what Kentucky used to be but isn’t anymore. Even in state recruits see Brohms program is much better than Stoops. I remember when we hired Stoops I wanted Brohm over Stoops. Then when Stoops was talking about leaving and Brohm was at Purdue I thought Barnhart would give him a call. He’s a much better coach then Stoops he connects with the players better and his teams are always well coached with very little penalties. They beat us last year and looked better at every phase of the game. Even if Stoops manages to go 6-6 and make a bowl game what are you going to get out of him the next 3 years? Nothing every time he makes a bowl his contract gets longer even if he goes 6-6. That’s a mistake on barnharts part. Why give someone that much time to relax because that’s what he doing when he gives out 5-7 year contracts with extensions for bowl games. Stoops should have left Kentucky a long time ago. I think he thought Kentucky would get him a better job then when Barnhart locked him down for 9 million a year he knew he wouldn’t make that much anywhere else he went. We’ve heard LSU was interested in him I’ve heard Texas A&M was interested but don’t you find it funny that none of these schools pulled the trigger on getting him? The fan bases would have went nuts. Playing a boring style of football really a big ten style in the most athletic conference in college football. What kills Kentucky in the SEC is speed.. We never have fast people at any position. Its more power then speed. Our offensive lineman are always to slow to block. Our defensive lineman and linebackers are to slow to get in on the quarterback because we only have 3 down lineman. That will work for Georgia and LSU that recruit top level athletes but it doesn’t work at Kentucky. We don’t have the personnel to run it. I think another thing that kills Stoops is he’s been in the sec for so long everyone knows how to beat him now. Stack the line of scrimmage on defense and we can’t run or pass and on defense carve up our zone by running flat routes or just throw it over top of the zone like Louisville and Florida and South Carolina did against us. They look at Stoops like he’s a bafoon for running the same offense for 13 years and the same defense. That’s the problem and nobody will call him out on his bs.
NIL has changed everything in college football. Hard nose beat’em up smash mouth coaches, like Stoop, everywhere are having trouble adjusting to the new reality in what used to be THEIR sport. Kids today are looking for one thing and one thing only – money. What they are not looking for is a long development period before they can turn Pro or, and this is the big or, looking for a way to maximize their earning potential before they run out of eligibility. This means a lot of one-and-dones. What this also means is that unless your collective has a boat load of money, you’re going to be behind the big boys in this league.
Now, you have to buy your division championship. Secondly, it’s no longer good enough to have just a good coach. Now the head coach has to be a superior judge of talent and find a way to make that talent work right now this season. It’s all about rate-of-return for the invested dollar. This means you have to have the right OC and DC because the HC is spending his time maximizing his pool of money.
I fear that I was correct four years ago when I said NIL was going to kill the sport of love.
Barnhart has to be the biggest ROI loser of any AD in the SEC, and Stoops and staff have very quickly recruited their way to bottom dwelling in SEC and that will take years to reverse. Stoops has made several bad OC hires during his tenure but Hamdan may be the worst yet. I believe the last 4 recruits that we hired were all non rated and that is big exclamation point of how far the program has fallen. Stoops and some staff do need to be Caliparied and this year will have to rival the disaster of last.
4 wins was the new “peak” for the remaining 4 (?) years of Stoops, the OC & the OL coach. Losing to every SEC team & UL leaves UM with 3 chances “to upset” cupcakes.
That’s he bad it’s gotten – of UK beats a cupcake it will be an upset!
The pivotal position(s) which have been the Achilles heel most seasons have revolves around an OC – either a good one choked by Stoops or just a pseudo OC. Consider the first 2 OC’s who were offensive wonders until Stoops tied them down wanting a 1-dimension offense. The OC led Cincinnati to a major bowl game with a big passing game and then under Stiops let the air out of the ball!
It’s been nearly 1/2 century since UK FB looked so bleak when Houston beat UK in Stoll Field at Homecoming 1966, my freshmen year. It’s a challenge to find a way to keep returning to the cellar but Stoops has done it, joining the most recent, chjoker, fielding an embarrassment of a program.
Not much to say – Terry summarized it perfectly. Speed kills.
Whiners are going to whine. How low Ky "fans" have fallen. Just like Washington.
There are not many jobs in the private sector where a man continues to get paid regardless of his performance. Stoops played his hand perfectly.