Mark Stoops basks in the shade of one of college football’s most lucrative and secure jobs.
At Kentucky, Stoops is not expected to produce national titles or conference championships. In the division era, he was not expected to win the SEC East or beat Georgia or Tennessee.
Just keep Big Blue Nation entertained until basketball heats up. Seven wins and a trip to the Gator Bowl will do just fine, thank you kindly.
This side of the golden parachute, it doesn’t get much better. Or, so I thought, anyway.
Stoops, in a recent interview with 247Sports, made it sound like he’s toiling in misery.
Stoops belittled Kentucky’s NIL efforts and said he’s so busy gladhanding and fundraising, he can hardly find time to coach.
“I get no help. None,” Stoops said during the interview.
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Stoops might consider this a plea for assistance, but trashing Kentucky and its NIL operative makes Stoops’ job harder.
Most coaches worry about their adversaries criticizing them on the recruiting trail or exaggerating the negatives about a particular school while they try to steer recruits away from a rival and toward their school. This practice is known as negative recruiting.
Lately, no one negatively recruits Kentucky more than Stoops.
Let’s review some of his actions in the past year:
∎ He described Kentucky fans as cheapskates and told them to “pony up” more money if they wanted him to beat better opponents.
∎ He flirted with the Texas A&M job before the Aggies shot down a trial balloon.
∎ He’s lost six of his past eight games.
∎ He trashed Kentucky’s NIL operation and claimed he’s too busy schmoozing to coach the way he’d like.
Stoops, 57, talks like a man who’s tired of Kentucky and set his sights on either replacing Kirk Ferentz at Iowa, his alma mater, or joining Nick Saban in retirement.
Either that, or Stoops completely lost touch with reality, and he truly believes that being asked to fundraise and beat Vanderbilt is an order too tall.
NIL collectives operate in a murky universe. I don’t know whether Kentucky’s NIL efforts are as bleak as Stoops makes them out to be, but perception is reality, and, thanks to Stoops, my perception is that lazy paupers run Kentucky football’s NIL collective.
That’s a destructive perception in this era in which NIL rules the recruiting roost.
Recruits and transfers want to play for a program with a well-oiled NIL machine. Stoops insists that, at Kentucky, he’s the only one putting in elbow grease under the hood trying to keep this jalopy running.
“I feel very isolated, very alone,” Stoops said during the 247Sports interview. “I’ll be honest, I don’t know how long I can take dealing with what I’ve dealt with.”
Heck of a crootin’ pitch, coach.
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Stoops exudes no love for Kentucky, where his handsome $9 million salary positions him to earn more than $1 million per victory.
How, indeed, can Stoops be expected grind under such harsh conditions?
The SEC eliminated divisions in favor of a fiercer 16-team conference, and Stoops laid groundwork for an excuse if Kentucky’s record dips in the face of a stiffening schedule: He’s got too much fundraising on his shoulders to win games.
“Other places are blessed with people that can raise (money) for them,” Stoops told 247Sports. “We’re not there. So, it just consumes me.”
Overshadowed amid Stoops’ naysaying is that he’s got plenty to sell. He’s Kentucky’s best coach since Bear Bryant. The Wildcats have a three-game win streak against Florida. Kentucky’s facilities are nice enough.
Stoops transformed Kentucky into a pretty good place to play football.
You wouldn’t know that, though, the way Stoops talks. To take it from him, Kentucky football is a shoestring operation run by an exhausted coach.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s SEC Columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @btoppmeyer.
Also, check out his podcast, SEC Football Unfiltered, and newsletter, SEC Football Unfiltered. Subscribe to read all of his columns.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentucky football: Mark Stoops makes job harder by trashing NIL
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