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By Lonny Demaree
Bells and whistles, pie in the sky, and smoking mirror's are what have been synonymous with Wildcat football from 2011 to the present. Over a stretch from 2006 through 2010 the smoking mirrors had all but dissipated though they were very visibly returning at the end of that era.
Having witnessed several consecutive Pro Day events at Nutter Field House when up to 26-Pro scouts attend in search of talent for their perspective teams. For the most part those were barren trips, almost embarrassingly so. On one occasion in 2012 a scout whispered in my ear “what is this?” It is bad when your strongest senior on the team was a former walk-on CoShik Williams.
Hence the project of building the talent level back to respectability which Mark Stoops is taking large strides starting with offensive – line talent. Stoops is dominating the state of Kentucky on the recruiting scene which is uncharacteristically deep in talent.
We are fast coming upon the Southeastern Conference Football Media Days. Being a veteran of the event it's commonplace to expect very little optimism from the media circus and any others in attendance. The ambivalence is earned when you are 20-41 over the last five years. Expect that UK will be picked 13th in the fourteen team league and Mark Stoops will be ranked as the thirteenth worst coach in the SEC. Again what has UK football done lately to merit anything better? Not negative, just reality. The Ambivalence will be kind and under the surface but will circuitously show itself. What UK hopes to gain out of the meeting is some optimism from Mark Stoops and the player representatives will show class.
What is expected for UK football in the 2015 season? The very quality freshmen that Stoops and company recruited in 2013 have been in the oven baking the dough out the middle and should now be ready to perform. With some Joker Phillips holdovers and a sprinkling of quality junior college players the Cats could fulfill the fans expectations in that it's time to wins some games, now.
The schedule sets up well in the middle of the season with two games in twenty-one days. Last season UK was one of only two SEC teams to play eight straight weeks in a row without a break and seven of those games were SEC games.
Could the cats start another run like the aforementioned? At the start of that 2006-'11 run McClatchy News Service purchased Knight Ridder which owned the Lexington Herald. They made a bold statement that if the Kentucky Wildcats defeated the Clemson Tigers, Clemson ought to shut their program down. They could leave half their team at home and win. For academic reasons Florida State left a third of their team at home and the remaining four and five star corps played UK (2007) in the Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl and went back to Tallahassee, Florida with a loss under their belt.
In the event another string is started as per usual some trepidation sets in over the threat of losing the head coach at Kentucky. To dispel that notion, times have changed in the SEC because of the revenue flow to the perspective teams via television money. Now schools like Ole Miss, Mississippi State and Kentucky or spending money on upgrading facilities hence parlaying into recruiting whereby there being no need to search out bigger programs. If moving were still in vogue why is Hugh Freeze and Dan Mullen still in place at the aforementioned universities? They have done far more than enough to be attractive to other programs.
In closing – poor Eastern Kentucky University. They are still getting spanked for their egregious error in 1983 when they flew a plane over Commonwealth Stadium flying a trailing banner during a game “Come Across the River and see Some Real Football.”
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