Bruce Feldman makes case for Kentucky's Mark Stoops in Top 15 among CFB's Top 25 head coaches
Bruce Feldman of The Athletic revealed his updated ranking of the Top 25 college football coaches, and he joined Paul Finebaum’s show to elaborate on it.
One of the coaches who made their way up the list was Kentucky’s Mark Stoops. He’s up from No. 18 to No. 14 after last season, Feldman heaping some respect on the Wildcats leader’s name.
On Tuesday, Feldman joined Finebaum to discuss why Stoops continues to rise, and why he admires what the Kentucky coach has accomplished throughout his tenure in Lexington, with a football team who’s school is better associated with basketball.
“I just have a lot of respect for what he’s done,” Feldman said during his hit on the SEC Network program. “It’s Kentucky football. I mean, obviously that’s a basketball school. You know, you look at the sustained success, over a century of playing football, they’ve only had four ten-win seasons. He’s had two of them. I just think it’s really amazing what he’s been able to do consistently there. If you take out that pandemic 2020 season, when they didn’t have non-conference games, they went 5-6. That was the only losing season they’ve had, going back now, coming up on eight years. That’s a really you know, remarkable run, just in the regard of, previously, before he got there, for about 70 years, they didn’t have a longer stretch of winning seasons of four years.
“So I think you have to consider where he’s doing it, the place he’s doing it at. Like, it’s Kentucky football. It’s not Vandy, but in terms of what he’s done there, I just don’t think he gets enough credit.”
In 2024, there will be a lot of pressure on Kentucky, as Mark Stoops and the Wildcats look to enter the upper echelon of their conference. The SEC is borderline wide open at the moment, and Stoops could take Kentucky to places they’ve never been if he’s as tremendous of a coach as Feldman believes.
Bill Connolly disagrees with Kentucky being a preseason top-25 team
When ESPN released its updated way-too-early top 25 for the 2024 college football season, Kentucky debuted at No. 23 overall. An interesting offseason has already unfolded in Lexington with a ton of turnover occurring inside of the program. Especially on the offensive end with quarterback Brock Vandagriff coming in from Georgia.
If things are going to work for Kentucky this year, Bill Connelly believes the offensive changes will have to be the reason why. Vandagriff will carry expectations with him but who his offensive coordinator will be is a mystery at the moment. Mark Stoops has built up a solid defense but there are holes to plug on offense.
“I think you have to believe the changes they made — that they’re probably making at coordinator, that they did make at quarterback with Brock Vandagriff coming in — you have to believe that’s really going to fix that offense,” Connelly said via The Paul Finebaum Show. “The defense should be good, there’s no question about that. They improved a little bit offensively last year but most of the reasons why are gone.”
Mark Schlabach did the rankings for ESPN, with everything being his opinion at this point of the offseason. If it were Connelly’s way-too-early top 25, he would not include the Wildcats.
“Now, you’re looking at three or four years where you didn’t win more than seven games,” Connelly said. “And for Kentucky, that tells you the bar has been raised significantly but they still haven’t cleared that bar in a while. If I’m putting that list there, I don’t put it down. Mark and I are allowed to disagree.”
On3’s Griffin McVeigh contributed to this article.