Kentucky football: Worst head coach hires in program history
By Josh Yourish
At a basketball school like Kentucky, it’s rare to have stability on the football field. Mark Stoops has brought that, but even after one of his worst seasons in Lexington, since turning the program around, he was nearly hired away by Texas A&M.
For a moment on Saturday night, Wildcats fans had to think about life after Stoops and hiring the next head coach. That day will come eventually and after this saga, it feels closer than ever. Stoops isn’t perfect, but when he does eventually leave, he’ll be missed in Lexington.
It’s not easy to find a good head coach and keep him at a basketball school. Over the years, Kentucky has had its struggles finding the right one. There were plenty of mistakes over the 108 seasons, but these four coaching hires were arguably the biggest ones.
The highlight of Bill Curry’s tenure was losing the 1993 Peach Bowl, so I think that says a lot about the state of Kentucky football at the time. He coached the team for seven years and didn’t have one winning season, his best record was 6-6 in ’93.
He followed up that 6-6 campaign by going 1-10 in 1994 and was fired two years later. He went 26-52 and 14-40 in the SEC.
Prior to Kentucky, Curry was successful enough at Georgia Tech to get the Alabama job in 1987. He won 10 games at Alabama in 1989, his final year in Tuscaloosa, but he never beat Auburn, so the Crimson Tide moved on.
After his stint at Kentucky, his coaching career appeared to be over. He did return to coaching in 2008, taking the Georgia State job which he held for three seasons before retiring.