Kentucky football's realistic hopes of winning the SEC and contending for the national championship just went out the window.
Andy Boh--a household name in the world of sports fans--is leaving his position as special teams coordinator and outside linebackers coach to take a position at Maryland to be defensive coordinator.
Boh was earning $325,000 for his coaching duties at UK.
In case you hadn't detected it, this blog has a smidgen of sarcasm. Less than 24 hours after perhaps the greatest college basketball game of all time, today's news about Boh reminds us all too starkly how pathetic the college sports infrastructure is. It's nothing against Boh personally--give me $325,000 to coach anything and I'll take it--but a critique of the relentless waste most of college sports operations are.
Kentucky football has been a forlorn operation for decades. Some years UK has managed to do better than they normally do. In 2007, the Wildcats beat No.1 LSU in an overtime contest. In 2011 they actually beat Tennessee--for the first time in 27 meetings.
But with few exceptions, UK football has been terrible, and everyone knows it. After Rich Brooks returned UK to respectability, the program took its latest nosedive. Joker Phillips quickly returned UK to the basement of the SEC, and was replaced by current coach Bob Stoops. After a predictably poor first year taking over a program in the doldrums, the misguided hope that UK football was on its way to respectability made a resurgence, stoked all the more when UK began the 2014 campaign with home wins against vastly inferior teams before getting pummeled--as usual--once they entered the maw of SEC play. The same pattern repeated last year when, after beating probably the worst South Carolina football team in memory, the UK football entourage again fell under the spell of the pipe-dream that UK was on its way to being a serious player in the SEC. But that South Carolina team was so bad that Coach Steve Spurrier didn't even bother to finish coaching through the season, and, once again, when UK faced its toughest conference opponents, they got hammered.
The one constant in UK football's poor play against its toughest opponents has been they can play zero defense when they run into the likes of Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi St., Florida, and Auburn. In other words, anyone coaching outside linebackers and special teams under Stoops must know something about football that I don't, because I've always assumed that giving up lots of points to your opponent, and getting trampled by your opponents' running game, was not good football. Apparently, Maryland thinks otherwise.
While I'm on the subject, I must point out that Stoops doesn't seem to realize the one thing (at least) that his rival coach 70 miles to the west has always understood about putting together a winning football team: the quarterback is the most important player on the team, and you have to have a great quarterback. Last year's season finale proved that point, when UK's early 21-0 lead over Louisville turned into a second half U of L route because Bobby Petrino inserted a freshman quarterback who ran wild over the Wildcats, especially in the second half. That was UK's last game of the season. And it showed that they have no defense, no ability to stop the run, and a coach who is entering his fourth season at the helm without an SEC-caliber quarterback.
In other words, replacing Boh will be the least of Stoops' worries. Unless someone turns out to be surprisingly really good, UK will again be without an effective quarterback who can consistently pass accurately and run effectively. And once again, after UK pounds its chest after beating teams that have little chance of beating them, SEC play will be a carnage.
Stoops took on a difficult assignment, but he has nonetheless been a disappointment. And, because of the SEC's divisional scheduling, he's even had the good fortune of not having to face Alabama. The call here is after the 2016 campaign UK will be looking to replace more than just its special teams coordinator.
$325k, poor performance, and a promotion! That's the American way.
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