Tuesday, November 08, 2005

UK AD says that football coach Brooks will hang around?!?!?

All I gotta say is that if University of Kentucky Athletic Director Mitch Barnhardt won't fire head football coach Rich Brooks, then Barnhardt's boss should fire him and hire someone who'll fire Brooks.

Barnhardt cited strong "in-state" recruiting classes and emphasizing the right things on and off the field. Those are two things I have a problem with. First of all in-state recruiting doesn't exactly give me the warm and fuzzies. Kentucky is a basketball state not a football state. Therefore in-state recruiting should be kept to a minimum. I've covered a couple of UK football recruits and at least one of them was a non factor in the 3 football games I covered and was a better basketball player than football player anyway. And on top of that he was playing against 1-A class football teams.

And I'm sorry, but emphasizing the right things on and off the field is just a cop out statement. No program is telling their kids to go out and get in trouble. And frankly, when you get into college, you shouldn't have to have adults constantly telling you that you should act like you've got some sense in your head.

Also, I don't see UK continuing to get strong recruiting classes when they get humiliated every time they take the field.

"Hello son, would you like to come play football for UK and get annihilated every time you walk out of that lockerroom? At UK we can give you that dream."

About the only recruiting strategy they can throw on a kid is that they can almost guarantee that he can be the star player if he's very good.

The bottom line is that Rich Brooks came completely out of nowhere. If not for Jerry Jones UK was looking at Bill Parcells. After that big juicy steak was dangled in front of us, we got Brooks who virtually no one had ever heard of.

I know that he can really be held responsible for the fact that UK has had so many injuries that soon players will be playing both sides of the ball, but I witnessed the 'Cats take a knee on the 12 yard line to run out the first half clock instead of kicking a measly 35 yard field goal. A field goal distance that surely you have to be able to kick blindfolded before you can make the team as a kicker. They instead chose to cut their losses and leave the points out on the field so they could go talk things over at half time.

Honestly, if I was a player I would have considered quitting at that point. If not for the fact that I would be giving up a free education, I know I would have quit. They left 3 points out on the field literally for no reason at all.

If Brooks was the head coach at Nebraska, he would have been fired after a poor performance in a Blue/White scrimmage.

LAST YEAR!

Merlin, you and French Toast need to pull some strings and get them both fired. Or are you going to leave things alone and show us your back-stabbing allegiance to those winged birds of Game.

9 comments:

Piccu said...

Strong in-state recruits? As far as that goes, that is the worst thing to hear. I don't even want in-state recruits for UK basketball.

I am sure many in-state recruits are happy to come to UK. It is a D-1 program and you get to play against name teams. What Kentucky boy with just enough talent to be able to come to UK (but not enough talent to be able to go anywhere else) wouldn't want to play there.

One of the big factors in a "star" player picking a college to play at is the amount of exposure he will get, TV time. The SEC offers plenty of chances to shine against big name teams, but at UK you may not be on TV until midnight. There was one football game that wasn't even on TV this year. When most of your games are not shown live, if shown at all, that is not a great selling point for your program.

Barnhardt is also the one who picked Brooks to turn around the program. Maybe his fate is tied to Brooks and he wants to give Brooks every chance he can to get things moving in the right direction or else he goes with him. I know injuries have really hurt the team this year, but this isn't Brooks' first year. As bad a UK has been in the past, they are worse now. Something has to give.

Just a few weeks ago we were watching the Notre Dame-USC game lamenting the fact that we had no big time college football team to root for like the Notre Dames and USCs. With Brooks running things and perhaps Barnhardt as well, we never will.

Travis said...

My goodness people. I realize that I'm the closest thing to a resident football expert on this board, but come on.

In state football recruits can get you some good players.
Brian Brohm
Shaun Alexander
Artose Pinner
Joseph Jefferson
Craig Yeast
Tim Couch
Jeff Brohm
Jeremi Johnson
(That's six guys who went to the NFL, one guy who could have, and one guy who will.)
Just off the top of my head.

Ky used to be a basketball state, and in many ways, it still is, but as far as high school talent, football players have been getting a whole lot better in state.

That's not a defense of Brooks, because he still stinks.
FYI, you were never that close to getting Bill Parcels. Believe me. I don't care what UK says, if they were that close to getting Parcells, if they had that kind of pull, they never would have had to settle for Brooks.

Piccu said...

I never said that there aren't any great Kentucky football recruits; they just aren't coming to the University of Kentucky. UK gets the potential recruits, the recruits who may be good in four years. They only get the big time recruits every 10 to 15 years.

I agree that the in-state football recruits may be getting better than in-state basketball recruits, which is why I do not want in-state basketball recruits on the team. We have had enough Stocktons, Carriers, and Blevins. We need more players from out of state.

As for the whole Parcells thing, I read the column by Pat Forde in the Courier-Journal not too long after this went down. Apparently Parcells is a huge horse racing fan and also either owns some horses or was going to get into breeding. I'm sure a big fat contract was also in the mix. Jerry Jones called Parcells about coming to Dallas the day before UK and Parcells were supposed to begin getting the contract in order. Whether Forde was lied to, that I do not know, I am only going by what was in the column.

FYI, you are the resident football expert, the rest of us just happen to be able to BS our way through most of it.

Travis said...

Just to buttress my point, three of the guys on my list were from UK and one (Shaun Alexander) was never recruited by Curry. His biggest mistake.

Travis said...

My last post.
Fifteen NFL players hail from the state of Kentucky.
Of those fifteen,
2 went to UK
1 went to Alabama
1 went to Arkansas
1 went to Tennessee
1 went to Cincinnati
1 went to Georgia Southern
1 went to Clemson
3 went to EKU
2 went to UofL
2 went to WKU

Piccu said...

Good researching, I was just guessing that most NFL caliber players from the state did not go to UK. I now see that UK is responsible for 13% of the Kentucky born players in the NFL. Not a very good percentage. We could surmise that UK gets two NFL caliber players every 10 years or so. For being the biggest school in the state and the school that is playing in the biggest conference, that doesn't seem to good to me.

Whatever the case may be, UK football stinks, it has always stunk and will conitnue to stink, Brooks or no Brooks.

BRATCH said...

Look at it like this as far as good in state talent goes.

Michael Schwindell.

You and I were at at least 2 or 3 games together to see him play. You went nuts about how he wasn't showing you anything and never had shown you anything.

Sure he was big and fast, but I know a slow and small DE that I would take over Schwindell in a heartbeat. And personally I don't see Fidler working out. I could be wrong, but I pretty sure he's been groomed to take a big fall after all of the slurping he's gotten in Hendo.

And besides, say you are completely right. Say that Kentucky is the world's breeding ground for football stars.

Brooks has had two "strong in-state" recruiting classes and has like 2 wins to show for it. Something has to give. Either the in-state recruits or their leader.

Really, when it comes down to it there shouldn't be in-state or out-of-state, it should be RECRUITING, period. Saying you have a strong "in-state" recruiting class kind of gives off a sense of, "Well we have a good recruiting class considering they are from Kentucky."

Recruit and don't factor in-state or out-of-state. They can either play or they can and I don't have to tell you how they are playing right now.

Travis said...

Piccu missed the point. Of those 15 players, nine played college in state. UK only got two. EKU had three, WKU had two. One went to Georgia Southern. So that's SIX guys that UK didn't offer a scholarship to (more than likely) who went to I-AA schools and then to the NFL.

You can't catch them all, but if UK really is getting "strong in-state" classes, that's not bad.

As far as Brooks's classes so far, he's only got one of them in school right now I think. You can't really count on freshmen too often in football. They're just not physically ready like in basketball or baseball.

Piccu said...

As bad as UK football is, I'm not sure that the recruits who didn't come to UK didn't just choose to go to a D-1AA school instead of UK.