Former UK defensive lineman Ricky Lumpkin has been an academic counselor at UK since 2018. (UK Radio Network Photo)
When he was a defensive lineman at Kentucky, Ricky Lumpkin did an internship with WKYT-TV in Lexington working with Rob Bromley, Steve Moss and Brian Milam. He liked working with the WKYT sports team and it made him think he might enjoy working as a sideline analyst for UK football games in the future.
He finished his UK career in 2010 and then played in the NFL with Arizona, Detroit, Oakland, Kansas City and Indianapolis until the start of the 2016 season. He briefly went to work at the University of Akron before returning to UK as an academic counselor in January of 2018.
“We are like a guidance counselor. We know a little bit about everything and know the rules to help keep athletes eligible and on track academically,” Lumpkin said.
He added another job when he joined the UK Radio Network pregame show. He’s working with host Christi Thomas and former UK offensive lineman Logan Stenberg, who was one of the first players assigned to Lumpkin when he started work as an academic counselor at UK.
Lumpkin, 37, said he cannot believe how much fun he’s had doing the pregame radio show offering his insights about the games and teams.
“The first week I felt like a freshman getting ready to play my first game. It has been fun talking football and having a good time breaking down film. I felt like a freshman getting ready to play my first game,” Lumpkin, a former Tennessee Mr. Football, said. “I didn’t watch quite as much film as when I was a player because I do have another job and two kids but it was so much fun looking for positives and negatives to talk about.
“The great thing is my son and daughter want to watch film with me and help. My wife (former UK gymnast Emilie Rymer) is more into football than me. She is all for analytics. We watched film together in college, too.”
Lumpkin, 37, didn’t grow up anticipating he would be a college football player despite the success he had at Kenwood High School in Clarksville, Tennessee. He had 101 tackles including 35 tackles for loss and 10 quarterback sacks his senior season.
“I was ready to go into the military. My dad spent 15 years in the military and my mom was in for 20 years,” Lumpkin said. “I played football because I loved it but even when letters from colleges started coming in I was still all about the military.”
Kentucky was the first school to recruit him and assistant coach Steve Ortmayer and then defensive coordinator Mike Archer and others came to visit. Current Eastern Kentucky coach Walt Wells was a Western Kentucky assistant who recruited him. Tennessee made a late push.
“It came down to Kentucky and Louisville. I committed to Kentucky, decommitted, committed to Louisville for a week and knew it was not right and Kentucky was where I needed to be. I still remember coach (Rich) Brooks telling my dad that ‘we suck and need players like your son.’ I bought in. Everybody else was trashing Kentucky, but I liked it,” Lumpkin said.
“Truthfully I didn’t know anything about Kentucky. I didn’t know where the Kentucky Derby was. I didn’t know anything about the basketball program. I knew UK football lost to LSU on a Hail Mary but that was about it. I just believed in the UK coaches. I won more games at UK than I would have at Louisville and right on par with what Tennessee won. I also met my wife at UK, so that was a huge win.”
Lumpkin has a lot of special game memories. He was part of the 2007 team that beat eventual national champion LSU in overtime but he did not play because of an injury. His favorite win was beating Arkansas and coach Bobby Petrino 21-20 in 2008 when Mike Hartline threw two fourth-quarter touchdown passes to Randall Cobb.
“Petrino was over there taunting us and we beat him. We also finally beat Steve Spurrier when South Carolina was ranked in the top 10,” Lumpkin said. “We were never afraid of anyone we played.”
Brooks instilled that attitude in Lumpkin and other UK players.
“I loved that man. He changed our lives,” Lumpkin said. “The standard with him was a standard. He held true to that standard when he let (quarterback) Curtis Pulley do and said if he had not done that, we would not have respected him. I was only 17, the second youngest player in our recruiting class, when coach Brooks and the other coaches took care of me. I learned life lessons from them that I still use.”
