The University of Kentucky announced that Joker Phillips is officially the head coach of the University of Kentucky football program. After being named the “coach in waiting” over the last year, today marked an accomplishment that was over 20 years in the making.
The Press Conference was held at 3:08PM. Why 3:08? Joker Phillips actually wore #8 when playing at UK as a wide receiver. In honor of that, the press conference was scheduled for “8” minutes after the hour.
Joker started by saying it was a childhood dream to play for the Wildcats, in a time when that was not a popular choice (it’s better, but it’s still not that popular). He thanked everyone that helped him reach this point in his career and sent out a special thanks to Rich Brooks and his wife. Joker was visibly shaken when talking bout coach Brooks. He became teary eyed and continued to wipe them away for a few minutes aferwards. This was one of the best parts of the press conference and almost made me a huge Joker fan (I’m a Joker fan, just not a huge one 😉
After thanking everyone, Joker got down to business. He promptly announced a “Call to service – directly and inderectly” and named it Operation Win.
Operation Win – “To continue to strive for excellence in every possible area related to the Kentucky football program”
Over the past couple of weeks many fans have questioned the decision to name Joker the head coach without looking to see who else is available. We’ve even hammerd out our opinions in two recent post..
“Will Joker’s Bubble Burst” and Kentucky Football’s Top Five Head Coaching Candidates Not Named Joker
Here are some comments Joker made about next year’s team…
Players Comming back– We have a good group of players comming back, D. Locke is comming back. John Conner will be the hardest to replace.
QB – “We are as talented as we’ve ever been at this position.” “We’re very deep and it should be competitive in the spring.”
Defense– “We loose Corey Peters and he’ll be hard to replace, but we feel we have enough to make up for it.” One concers was the loss of Trevard Lindley. He didn’t actually play a lot this year so we gained some experience at that spot.
Overall he did a great job and he made me excited about next years team. I’m hoping he can shake things up and give the fans something exciting to watch on the field.
Here’s the press conference in case you missed it….
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
