Cole Cubelic does not think losing Vince Marrow is a “great” move for Kentucky coach Mark Stoops. (Vicky Graff Photo)
By LARRY VAUGHT
If Vince Marrow is leaving Kentucky — and the silence has continued since an ESPN report came out that UK’s associate head coach was joining Jeff Brohm’s staff at Louisville — there is a path forward for coach Mark Stoops, according to SEC Network analyst Cole Cubelic.
“I think Mark’s good enough and has a good enough network to be able to replace him in some sense, but not in every sense imaginable, no,” the SEC Network analyst said on The Paul Finebaum Show on the SEC Network.
However, Cubelic did not sugar-coat that the move was not good for Kentucky.
“I don’t think it’s great for Kentucky and Mark Stoops. It seems that Vince has sort of been his right-hand man for quite some time. And when you talk about recruiting in this league, if you were to ever throw out the top three, top five individual recruiters, his name would have to be one toward the top of the list,” Cubelic told Finnebaum.
“Relationships with those guys once they arrive on campus, there’s always those one, two, three sort of go-to guys if you have an issue, if you need to talk to somebody, something’s going on with your family, Vince was always one of those guys that I think you could go lean on.”
Cubelic believes Stoops is now trusting and leaning on others more than Marrow.
“I think Mark trusts a lot of the other people around him, specifically guys like Brad White on the defensive side of the ball. He got his old offensive line coach back in Eric Wolford, who he’s had previously and now wants him to be part of the staff. Eddie Gran has sort of rejoined the staff and been there,” Cubelic said.
“He wants to make sure those guys have other ways to be important and be a bigger part of the staff as well. I just don’t know how much room there was for an extra opportunity for Vince.”
Like most UK fans, Cubelic never envisioned a Stoops-Marrow split because they were childhood friends, having success in the SEC. The SEC Network/ESPN analyst does wonder what impact Marrow’s departure will have on UK recruiting if the rumors are true about him going to Louisville.
“I think Mark and Vince have done a great job over time of not getting obsessed with recruiting the SEC footprint. You go look at a lot of the guys they’ve brought in from Ohio and from above the Mason-Dixon line that normally I think a lot of older Kentucky coaches would have looked at and said, ‘No, we have to go win at Atlanta, in Nashville, in Birmingham, in Mobile, in New Orleans,’” Cubelic said.
4 Responses
No, he can’t replace Marrow, even with 2 hires. Stoops has been making bad decisions every season by running off OC’s due to his control and lack of offensive understanding. Now he has dug his deepest hole and every failure has been Stoops’ fault including this fiasco of running off Marrow!
UK needs a package deal where the AD, HC, OC, OL coach all get sent packing in exchange for nothing. That would be a winning deal.
Haha I think either Barnhart fires Stoops or Barnhart needs to be fired. How many coaches in the sec have there friends being the o line coach there brother as the linebackers coach and then to hire Bush with doing high there homework and seeing he wrecked Boise states offense is beyond me!
Bush & the OL coach ended the career of the UGA QB transfer before he ever got started. In addition to crashing in 2024, those inept offensive coaches caused UK to lose a couple of receivers (and one is a kick-off & punt returner) to the portal.
Stoops has probably ruined more QB’s in his tenure than any 10 coaches have ruined in 10 years.
From the outside looking in it seems like Ky is still trying to run a college football team. Clearly college football is beyond that. Ky needs a NFL style professional staffing structure and run as such.