Rich Brooks: Into the West

What can you see,
on the horizon?
Why do the white gulls call?
Across the sea,
a pale moon rises.
The ships have come,
to carry you home.

And all will turn, 
to silver glass.
A light on the water.
Grey ships pass
Into the West.

-- Into the West, Annie Lennox

And so it is that the Rich Brooks era has passed.  From the West he came, and eventually, into the West he will return.  But hopefully, not just yet.

Coach Rich Brooks left a mark on the Kentucky football program that the fans will never forget.  From the darkest depths of probation and despair, through disappointment at his hiring and calls for his head that might have sent lesser men his age straight back to the flyrod, Rich Brooks showed us all that he was made of sterner stuff.

In his seven years as Kentucky Head Football Coach, Brooks proved that earnest hard work with a caring but traditional attitude can still be effective in today's instant-gratification, 24-hour news cycle world.  His tenure wasn't sexy and it wasn't modern.  The sports world barely took notice.  But gradually, slowly, deliberately and effectively, Rich Brooks led the Kentucky Wildcats back from the failed program that it was to respectability.  It was a long, sometimes painful journey, but Brooks (and to his credit, Mitch Barnhart), never lost faith in their shared vision.

Unfortunately, Brooks was to be denied his ultimate objective, which was to compete for the SEC championship in football.  Even after rising from the depths, the program fell short of his goals for it.  Despite becoming competitive with almost every team in the SEC, Kentucky never quite managed to get over the hump under Brooks and get to a winning SEC season.  I'm sure that's a big disappointment to him, but having established a winning tradition over the last four years at Kentucky, the transition from also-ran to contender may happen before he returns into the West.

I remember not agreeing with the Brooks hire, not liking the man I saw on TV as the UK coach, and ultimately thinking he should be replaced shortly before the program turned around.  I was wrong about that, and I'm happy to admit it.  Brooks helped take me from a "Who cares?" attitude about the Kentucky football program to looking forward eagerly to the next season, a change made possible by Brooks steady hand and sturdy vision for what UK football could become.

It took years for his dry, sometimes even grim personality to become familiar to the Big Blue Faithful, let alone comfortable.  I think, though, that Brooks' no-nonsense demeanor is one of the things I will miss the most.  In many ways, it was a refreshing change from the constant coach-speak spouted by most SEC head men, or the salesmanesque style of some of the younger coaching breed.  Brooks was like none of them, an old-school, old-style, old-fashioned coach from an era some of us barely remember.

Yet even after all his accomplishments here, Brooks is not beloved of all Kentucky fans.  Even though he eventually earned high praise from the national sports media and respect from conference bloggers and sportswriters, there is a minority of the Big Blue Faithful who never liked Brooks, only grudgingly conceded his success, and always thought Kentucky could have done better.  I suspect this is normal for any fan base, though it seems remarkable hubris for a program as decrepit as the one Brooks took over.  I think some UK fans have a distorted image of the University of Kentucky, as though it were on equal footing with the rest of the SEC powers in football tradition and program stature.  If only that were so.

I have compared growing a football program in the SEC to trying to grow things in the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Desert, a place so desolate and bereft of water that not even the Bedouin go there.  Despite the challenges, Brooks has grown a garden in the stony ground of the nation's best football conference, and even though the yield is still smaller than the fans would like, the roots have established themselves deep in the earth, and it comes back more lush each season thanks to Brooks' careful and diligent care.  Perhaps John Clay said it best:

When you think of Rich Brooks and his time here, remember this: Once the coach shed the handcuffs of probation and the scholarship-reductions he inherited, there were very few Saturdays that you went to Commonwealth Stadium and thought "Kentucky has no shot today."

Coach Brooks' greatest disappointment, according to this article by Chip Cosby, was not breaking more of the long winning streaks teams like Florida and Tennessee have against the Wildcats.  Indeed, most Kentucky fans share that disappointment, and there is not much else to be said about that.  No program that has "arrived" should have 20+ game losing streaks to conference foes.

Brooks also said that he was almost the only one who was comfortable with his decision to retire:

"The only person that was comfortable with this decision was me," Brooks said. "None of (Brooks' children) wanted me to give it up. They all thought that I would miss it a lot, that I could come back and ride out on the white stallion next year and have victories over all those teams we haven't beaten, and everything would be wonderful. The only sane one was my wife, who said she just wanted me to do what I wanted to do."

This speaks of a man who knows himself, who understands the world as it is, and who recognizes the moment when the right time has come.  The longer the whole "head coach in waiting" thing goes on, the more novelty of it wears off as the good reasons for doing it in the first place are forgotten or re-cast in the light of subsequent events.  Coach Brooks certainly knew this, and to his credit, recognized the point of diminishing returns.  If he had stayed, it would have had to be for him, not for others, and not for the program.  He decided that enough was enough -- there are only so many bites at the apple available.

Rich Brooks leaves Kentucky secure in the knowledge that he has done his best to establish a strong foundation, and I believe he has.  He knows Joker Phillips better than any of us, and if Brooks says he is the right man for the job at Kentucky, I believe him.  I also happen to agree with him independent of his assessment, as Phillips has proven to be capable of getting a lot from his offensive talent.  Now, we need to see how he does at the top.

So at last, my friends, we come to the end.  The end of an era, the ending of Rich Brooks' tenure, and the beginning of Joker Phillips' reign as the head coach of the Kentucky football Wildcats.  The last four years have been a great improvement, but I would not gainsay coach Brooks when he says that a younger man is better suited to take the program on from here.  As I grow older, I know the place from which Brooks speaks -- I have had darkling glimpses of it more and more frequently.

God bless you, coach Brooks.  May your golden years be blessed.  We will miss your firm but gentle hand.