HOOVER, Ala. — On Nov. 3, 2012, Vanderbilt played Kentucky in an almost-empty Commonwealth Stadium. By then a lot of football fans knew what was coming and chose to stay home. Those who showed up for kickoff didn’t stay long. By the beginning of the second half, there were fewer than 10,000 people in the seats. The Wildcats lost to the Commodores 40-0.
Five months later, the Wildcats attracted 50,831 screaming fans to their spring game.
Such is the impact Kentucky’s new head coach, Mark Stoops, has had in Lexington. From the day he arrived, Stoops gave a much-needed jolt to a program searching for positive energy.
“It was crazy,” running back Raymond Sanders said at SEC Media Days. “You show up on campus and see this flood of people and there’s nothing you can say but, ‘Wow.’ It was a little discouraging last year to see 19,000 people (in Commonwealth Stadium). We are grateful to those guys who came out and supported us, but to have 50,000 people at the spring game, man that was really special.”
A new coach generating enthusiasm is nothing new. Butch Jones got a rousing reception when he arrived at Tennessee, and Gus Malzhan looked like Caesar entering the gates of Rome when he returned to Auburn.
The real trick for a new coach is keeping that energy level high through the dog days of summer and into the first month of the season. On that front, Stoops seems to have made a lot of good moves. The Wildcats have one of the top recruiting classes in the country committed (though not yet signed) for 2014, with Stoops getting nods from several key players in Ohio, a market that once was almost completely off limits to Kentucky.
“It made a lot of sense to me with Southern Ohio being so close to us,” the coach said of his recruiting emphasis in the Buckeye State. Stoops grew up in Youngstown and coached at Nordonia High School in Macedonia, Ohio, for four years before taking an assistant-coaching job at the University of South Florida. “With my ties to Northern Ohio, it made sense to recruit the whole state."
But those new and exciting players are rising high-school seniors, a year away from showing up on any campus.
In the meantime, the Wildcats still face a talent gap relative to the rest of the conference and one of the toughest schedules in the nation. After opening with Western Kentucky and its new coach Bobby Patrino on Aug. 31, Stoops and his team face Miami (Ohio), Louisville, Florida, South Carolina and Alabama. The only game on the schedule marked as a “should win” is Alabama State. That doesn’t happen until Nov. 2.
“We feel an obligation to put a great team out there,” Stoops said. “The fans deserve it. They have been very loyal. To know that they have people who care about them is really great for the kids.”
In addition to recruiting, Stoops has implemented a spread offense designed to strike quickly and get his backs and receivers open in space, as well as a 4-3 defense he hopes will slow some of the powerful offenses he will face in the SEC.
“We’re working really hard, but we need to work really hard,” said defensive tackle Donte Rumph. “We have a lot to prove.”
Until they prove it, Kentucky is just another team with enthusiastic fans and optimistic players. The fact that Stoops hasn’t even settled on a quarterback for his new offense hasn’t dampened the support.
“We’ve seen good things out of all of (the quarterbacks),” Stoops said. “But we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. They all need to improve.”
Even with that note of caution, fans and players are all in with Stoops and the new regime.
“Eight wins,” Rumph said when asked to define a successful 2013. “Eight-plus wins would be a successful season for me.”
He said it with such confidence that it was hard for anyone to point to the schedule and ask him to find those eight wins. Like many of the fans and all of the players, Rumph is a happy passenger on the Big Blue locomotive for now.
“There is a different buzz on campus,” Sanders said. “You walk around and people ask you what’s going on with the team and with the season. It makes you work even harder because you want to keep those fans happy and keep them coming to the games. It feels a lot different. It feels good.”
