Cole Cubelic reacts to Vince Marrow move, talks path forward for Mark Stoops and Kentucky

The move of former long-time Kentucky assistant Vince Marrow to Louisville took the college football world by storm on Monday. It was about as big a June move as they get.

Analysts around the country spent some time reacting to the news, including the SEC Network’s Cole Cubelic. Cubelic joined The Paul Finebaum Show on Tuesday to weigh in.

“I don’t think it’s great for Kentucky and for Mark Stoops,” Cubelic said. “It seems that Vince has sort of been his right-hand man for quite some time. And when you talk about recruiting in this league if you were to ever throw out the top three, top five individual recruiters, his name would have to be one toward the top of the list.

“Relationships with those guys once they arrive on campus, there’s always those one, two, three sort of go-to guys if you have an issue, if you need to talk to somebody, something’s going on with your family, Vince was always one of those guys that I think you could go lean on.”

In other words: Not the kind of guy you want to lose. Kentucky will have to work without Vince Marrow going forward. Was there anything the Wildcats could have done to prevent the move, which apparently blindsided Kentucky brass?

“I do think Vince wanted bigger and better things, and I just don’t know what else that could have been in Lexington,” Cubelic said. “I think Mark really trusts a lot of the other people around him, specifically guys like Brad White on the defensive side of the ball. He got his old offensive line coach back in Eric Wolford, who he’s had previously and now wants him to be part of the staff. Eddie Gran has sort of rejoined the staff and been there.

“He wants to make sure those guys have other ways to be important and be a bigger part of the staff as well. I just don’t know how much room there was for extra opportunity for Vince.”

Still, the Vince Marrow move admittedly caught Cubelic by surprise. He noted as much on the Finebaum Show.

“This is one that if you asked me would there ever be a split, would there ever be a divide between those two on any SEC staff, I probably would have told you no, and that goes back to their Youngstown days,” Cubelic said. “And that’s one area that they’ve recruited extremely well.”

In fact, one of the biggest question marks Cubelic has for Kentucky in the post-Vince Marrow era is whether the recruiting focus might shift. He broke down the areas Marrow really prioritized.

“It’s one of the things I think Mark and Vince have done a great job of over time is not get obsessed with recruiting the SEC footprint,” Cubelic said. “You go look at a lot of the guys they’ve brought in from Ohio and from above the Mason-Dixon line that normally I think a lot of older Kentucky coaches would have looked at and said, ‘No, we have to go win at Atlanta, in Nashville, in Birmingham, in Mobile, in New Orleans.’

“They went up north a little bit more and had a lot of success, and Vince is a big part of that. I was surprised to see it.”

So how does Kentucky proceed from here, with Vince Marrow now helping a bitter rival? Cubelic still sees a path forward.

“I think Mark’s good enough and has a good enough network to be able to replace him in some senses but definitely not in every sense imaginable, no,” the SEC Network analyst said.