Maybe Calipari can recruit some football players, too?

How dare you bring up football in January! In the midst of SEC play! Near treason!

But Rivals says he’s a 3. Probably because he’s kind of small for an end at 228 lbs. with a less-than-knockout 40 time. Not that the 40 matters, but still.

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And it will be a welcomed example of such if Joker guides the team to bowl games. Any bowl game.

Should he advance the team, to a stray higher level bowl every once in a while, it will be an especially satisfying example of being proven wrong.

Joker is being given a fair chance. By all of us. But what are we supposed to do, just wipe the slate clean of his past coaching decisions, and play calling philosophies, as if they never happened? Just cross our fingers and hope that Joker as “Head Coach” is appreciably different from Joker as “Head Coach of the Offense”? A total “free pass” because he is a UK guy, thru and thru?

Alright, then. Fingers crossed and a clean slate it is. Go Blue!

do you think it would have been unreasonable to at least explore other options as the head coach at UK? Do you think this recruiting class validates the way things were done? Is that not what this is about;grading the recruiting class? If continuitity was supposed to improve that,then so far we have not done that. If it is about maintaining the status quo;then we HAVE done that. We could have looked at any number of guys including Jim Donnan, Tommy Tuberville, on and on..

While Brooks had sucess by UK standards; he did nothing that should have entiltled him to name his successor. That is National Title territory; reserved for people like Joe-Pa.

that’s for sure.

I heard Dr. Todd interviewed by Chris Cross on 1300 one afternoon. He talked about this.

I just remember sitting in my truck and saying to myself: “Are you kidding me? So that is the level of thought that goes into major decisions like this? Are we even trying to move forward?”

I spent more time doing research the last time I bought a new camcorder, than that.

Brooks says to recruit, I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here, but meet my replacement.

If the recruit is fine with Joker, he comes to UK.

Conversely, if Brooks (or an opposing coach) says, I don’t know much I’ll be here, but my replacement is uncertain. The next coach might run an option offense Few people are going to walk into that degree of uncertainty.

said that the main reason he came to UK was that he believed in Joker Phillips who recruited him hard and said he liked his coaching style when he signed with us. He didn’t even mention Coach Brooks by name, look at his video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jB_LU0Lrvo

The guy knows what hes doing

looks kinda like JaMarcus Russell when he was at LSU

apparently we already have the guy in camp. I don’t see a lot of quarterbacks on the lists of our recruits.

You are so right about the ‘just not losing’.
Charleston Southern, Western and Akron. The first two are in the 180’s in the rankings and Akron over 100. We aren’t going to play anyone we don’t have to. The ‘respectibility’ that Brooks chased and never caught is going to continue to elude our program until we get someone who wants to make an honest effort at improving footall.
Ain’t going to happen with the current athletic director.
He’s tickled to death to lose to Tennessee as long as we can get to a bowl in balmy Nashville or Memphis.

what I am trying to express frustration with. The apparent ease at which this program, and its fans, seem to accept the status quo. Which according to who defines it, is: (a) better than before, (b) not awful, or ( c) little baby steps.

To let you in on a secret, my main frustration isn’t really with Joker, although I do have serious reservations about how good he is going to prove to be. For all I know, Joker may very well have been the best candidate to take over. That is possible.

My frustration is a little higher up the ladder than Joker. It is with Dr. Todd, and to a lesser extent with Mitch. It annoys me that there is this giant cloud of “Why golly gee! Isn’t going to the Music City Bowl such a wonderful thing!? Why, I betcha we can get a reasonably priced new coach to keep bringing us down here to beautiful Nashville pretty regularly!”

I am not saying that we would have found another coach better than Joker. That’s fine. I am just saying that at the very least Dr. Todd should not have painted this program into a corner named “Status Quo with the Coach in Waiting”. No offense to anyone’s delicate sensibilities, but as competitors, that is pretty weak.

As a competitor, it is never to your strategic advantage to voluntarily narrow your own options. Not if the object is to move forward.

Maybe Joker would have been the best coach available, even if we had at least tried to look around. And perhaps Joker will advance the program. I would love to see it. Why? Well it isn’t because Joker is “a UK guy” and “deserves a chance”, it is because I always want this program to do everything it possibly can to move…. forward.

what surprises me is your lack of knowledge about the present.

I’ve been waiting to beat the Vols since 1984.

As there are no top rated recruits,this class will not have an impact on the field one way or another for at least a couple of years. The cupboard is not totally empty now; but it is interesting that we have not signed at least one four star recruit as yet. But small steps forward would be nice, and a recruiting class is an item on the report-card. Bottom of the SEc is not acceptable to me,even if we play in the" Also-Ran" Bowl every year.

it seems the written record is hard to defeat.
But I do like to see a pep rally for the football faithful now and then.

they seem to be just repeating what other scout pubs put out. Also, decades of championship football in the tri-state and no ranked recruits by rivals? are they saying the coaching is better there?