It was announced late Wednesday night that stud receiver coach and head recruiter, Tee Martin was leaving UK and joining Southern California’s coaching staff. First by Matt Barkley’s twitter account, then by UK. USC’s former wide receivers coach, Ted Gilmore, left the Trojans to join the Oakland Raiders. He was named 2011 Wide Receivers Coach of the Year. Those were some pretty huge shoes to fill and it’s no surprise that Tee Martin is getting his shot to fill them.
Tee Martin wasn’t necessarily as important to the UK team as a “receivers” coach as he was a top notch recruiter. When asked last year why the receivers were dropping so many passes, Tee responded in the form of “I don’t know, I’ve never played receiver”. He brought in arguably some of the best recruiting classes UK has seen in some time. Right after the season ended Tennessee wanted him in a bad kind of way, but Tee held out and landed a sweeter gig in So Cal.
Now, we must move on. Who is out there that can effectively replace coach Martin? There’s a lot of places to start looking, but I found 3 candidates that Joker and his staff may want to look at very soon. Before we begin allow me to state these are “Realistic” choices for our current football program.
My #3 target is Dickey Lyons, Jr. Last we heard from Dickey he was working in Louisiana in accounts payable putting 14 hour days in and getting a beer gut. Dickey bleeds blue and would do a great job if given the opportunity. He has a lot of knowledge about the game and if he’s working 14 hours at a job he hates think about what he’d be on the recruiting trail. He’s at least worth an interview.
My #2 target is Johnny Cox. Johnny just last year was a wide receivers coach for the NFL. Unfortunately it was with the Jaguars who had no head coach or quarterback to speak of. He has high school, college and NFL coaching experience as well has having played receiver at Fort Lewis College where he was a 2-time first team D-2 All American. He knows the position and may be available and interested if the Cats came calling.
My #1 overall choice is Jason Candle. Who? He is currently the receivers coach and head recruiter for the Toledo Rockets. Candle did a fantastic job with the Toledo receivers especially Rocket WR Eric Page all which propelled his team to an 8-5 record and their 1[SUP]st[/SUP] bowl appearance in 5 years. According to [URL=”http://espn.go.com/college-football/statistics/team/_/stat/receiving/sort/totalTouchdowns”]ESPN[/URL], Toledo had the 8[SUP]th[/SUP] best receiving team in the nation, right behind Stanford, Okie St and Baylor. He’s young and may be willing to drop his current gig and join the SEC ranks.
UK has to grab a young up and come or a seasoned veteran coach to take over for Martin. Getting a big dog assistant coach at a prime time school to come UK just isn’t happening. I’m sure Joker will hire a name not on this list and someone we probably have never heard of, but he has to get on the horn soon if he wants to stay on top of recruiting. When its all said and done It’s not going to be easy to replace Tee. We should thank him for all his hard work and wish him good luck in Cali.
