SEC Country’s Kyle Tucker made sure to give both sides of the story of Mark Stoops and his tenure as the University of Kentucky Football coach in his recent article after the Wildcats loss to Louisville.
It gives a great look at what Stoops has done and hasn’t done while at Kentucky.
He is the reason for a lot of good in the program but as Tucker puts it, he is also the reason it hasn’t lived up to expectations as well.
See, Stoops didn’t suddenly forget how to coach defense. And he has better talent than most UK coaches before him. You get here, to this place where opponents run wide open more often than not, by having no discipline.
That starts at the top. I’ve watched Stoops lose his cool — and then his mind — too many times to count on game days. All it takes is one call he doesn’t like, and two, three, four plays might go by before Stoops stops seeing red and realizes the game is still in progress. That has cost Kentucky before, no matter what he tries to tell us.
He is two things an SEC coach cannot afford to be: quick-tempered and thin-skinned, the latter of which has become uncomfortably obvious this season as he stews in his seat during Monday press conferences and his weekly call-in radio show about a lack of praise for another winning season.
Can you fathom Nick Saban doing that? Or tolerating Jones’ behavior — for three seconds, let alone three seasons?
So let’s give Stoops the credit he deserves, for bringing Kentucky football back from the dead, but let’s not make excuses for a man who gets a $250,000 bonus for every win after six. This season was solid because of Stoops, but it failed to be special because of him, too.
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