Kentucky football coach Mark Stoops knows what it takes to build a winning program, it all starts with recruiting. Stoops and company just finished wrapping up the best recruiting class in school history for 2014, and is starting on the 2015 class. Kentucky held a junior day Saturday Feb.15 and had a lot of big time prospects on campus.
Andy Staples of SI.com has a great article about Mark Stoops and rebuilding Kentucky football.
Here is an excerpt from the article.
LEXINGTON, Ky. — Rupp Arena throbbed with the kind of manic energy created when ESPN’s College GameDay starts the party in the morning for a game that doesn’t tip off until 9 p.m. A mix of college students with raging hormones, grown-ups acting like college students, beer, bourbon and the thrill of a matchup with the No. 2 team in the nation cranked the volume in the place past jet-engine level well before the first bars of the national anthem floated into the air.
It was into this Big Blue spectacle that Kentucky football coach Mark Stoops led a group of high school juniors wearing letter jackets from schools across the eastern half of the country. The prep stars tried their damnedest to appear cool as they waded through the throng toward their seats, but most couldn’t stop themselves from staring slack-jawed at the madness all around them. Many college football coaches prefer to build Junior Days around big basketball games because they tend to energize a school. With the Wildcats playing Florida and the nation watching on Feb. 15, Stoops knew he could wow his top targets in the class of 2015. He personally escorted Damien Harris, a five-star tailback from Berea, Ky., who earlier in the week had been personally escorted by Ohio State coach Urban Meyer to watch Michigan play the Buckeyes in Columbus. As Stoops and Harris climbed the stairs, they stopped every few feet to reciprocate high-fives from fans who, thanks to Stoops, celebrated National Signing Day in February — not the one in November reserved for Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari’s annual haul of McDonald’s All-Americans — for the first time since quarterback Tim Couch faxed his letter of intent to the Wildcats in 1996.
Harris was representative of the group of 20 or so players that Stoops, who in November completed his first season as coach, had invited to Lexington that day. (Per NCAA rules, the juniors and their families had to pay their own way on the trip. Players cannot make official visits until they are seniors.) All have other options. Most of those other options have been far more successful than Kentucky over the past few seasons. Take Harris, for example. The Wildcats went a combined 4-20 in 2012 and ’13. Ohio State went 24-2 over that same span.
Read Mark Stoops has blueprint in place to rebuild Kentucky football by clicking here.
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