What Ohio coach told Stoops about recruiting Cincinnati

When Mark Stoops came to Kentucky as head coach, he immediately emphasized that he would recruit Ohio, his home state. He made that even clearer when he hired Vince Marrow, another Ohio native, to coach tight ends.

He had three Ohio signees in his initial recruiting class, but UK’s two commitments for 2014 are both Ohio prep standouts and Stoops and Marrow seem to be in position to land many more Ohio players in their second recruiting class.

That doesn’t surprise Lakota West High School coach Larry Cox, who sent John Conner to UK as a walk-on player and watched him develop into a NFL player. The veteran Ohio prep coach thinks UK has missed out on recruiting Ohio players for years.

“To be perfectly honest, Kentucky has never really recruited Ohio hard,” said Cox.

Kentucky is recruiting his star running back, Mikel Horton, and seems to be one of his top five schools. Cox also senses the push Stoops is making into Ohio for other players.

“Some of the premier players in Ohio, Kentucky tried to go after but they did not really not go after the all-around type of premier players,” Cox said. “Mark realizes being from Ohio what type of talent this state has. Look at what John Conner did. That tells you what type of talent there is here.

“When Stoops first got the job at Kentucky, I told him, ‘You are an hour from downtown Cincinnati and for you not to be recruiting Cincinnati is a crime,’” Cox said. “You are looking at some of the hottest football talent in the state in southwestern Ohio. He better be living in this part of the state. Our kids play good competition every week and will play at a high level in college. They want to play the best, too.

“Vince Marrow is primarily recruiting our area and understands that. He is already doing a great job and you can see the results. Kentucky has a chance to make a big splash in Ohio and they know that.”

Great quotes and one of those things that demonstrates how UK just has not been smart about recruiting and sell itself. That is an indictment on a lot of coaches and administrations.

It's not that we didn't recruit Cincinnati hard, I'm not sure we recruited hard, period. Back in the 2003 and 2004 periods we were doing a decent job. But, even at that, hard would not describe our efforts.

We've all been saying this for years. Never ever made sense to me. Instead of trying to convince guys form the south to come north, it's a much easier sell to get guys from the north to come south. Considering the huge amount of UK alumni in Cincy, I agree, it was a crime.

Don't you guys understand that Ohio boys just want to play in the Big Ten and Buckeyes think Kentuckians are just a bunch of hicks?

I mean really the SEC is the best of the best in college football, and we are the closest SEC program to Ohio, so it makes sense to recruit the heck out of Ohio. All we have to do is say to a recruit: If you want to prove you are the best out there, come to UK, play in the SEC, and there will be no doubt.


Why this hasn't been painfully obvious to previous coaches is confusing...

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Originally Posted by ETWNAPPEL

We've all been saying this for years. Never ever made sense to me. Instead of trying to convince guys form the south to come north, it's a much easier sell to get guys from the north to come south. Considering the huge amount of UK alumni in Cincy, I agree, it was a crime.

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It's not that simple. It's not hard to get guys from the South to play at any SEC school. It is a much easier sell. We play a lot more games in the South than we do in the North. These kids families' from down here can keep up with them and follow them on the road much easier. That's at least 4 or 5 games a year in easy driving distance. I still think you have to work extra hard to get a kid out of Ohio. There are a lot of D1 schools you have to go up against in Ohio other than the Bucs. You have Pitt, Penn St., WVU, Michigan, MSU, Notre Dame as schools that recruit there Big time. Throw in the MAC schools, Uavel, Marshall, and Cincy and there is a lot of competition. We are fortunate that the Stoops name gets a lot of recognition in Ohio. To me that is the difference maker. The Stoops have very valuable contacts there.

Plus Marrow or Morrow seems to be in line for a big time raise, should we get 8 or some committs out of there by the end of May as some think

I have never understood why we didn't work Ohio a lot more vigorously than we had before. There has always been a boatload of good football talent coming out of Ohio, and it never made sense to me that we didn't go after that talent as hard as we should have been.