Every Kentucky fan remembers the 2009 Liberty Bowl for one thing: Ventrell Jenkins scooping up a fumble and rumbling the other way like a runaway freight train.
For Joe Sloan, it’s remembered a little differently.
Before he was Kentucky’s new offensive coordinator, Sloan was on the other sideline that day, a walk-on holder and scout-team quarterback at East Carolina, watching the Wildcats rip away what felt like a sure win.
“I don't know what it was called,” Sloan joked when asked about it, “but take me back.”
Joe Sloan ‘You better beat everybody soundly’ when at a small school
Sloan still has the details burned into his brain. ECU had things rolling early. They had trap option in the game plan. The defense was playing well. It looked like the kind of grind-it-out bowl win Group of Five teams live for.
Then everything flipped.
“Pat Pinkney, our quarterback... got stiff-armed. I mean, picked up a fumble and then got stiff-armed on his helmet like exploded,” Sloan remembered, laughing at the memory the way you do when enough time has passed.
But the laughter came with a familiar gripe every ECU fan from that era has muttered at some point: life is different for G5 programs when the stripes get tight.
“Listen, if you're a G5 team, you better beat everybody soundly, okay? It just is what it is,” Sloan said. “No offense to the Liberty Bowl. They’re always going to favor the SEC school, which is good. I favor it now, right?”
Somewhere, Ventrell Jenkins is still insisting the runner's knee was never close to being down. Somewhere in Greenville, they’re still insisting it absolutely was. Check out the video yourself.
From heartbreak to home
For Kentucky fans, that Liberty Bowl was a classic Rich Brooks moment: defense, chaos, big-man touchdown, a program trying to prove it belonged on bigger stages.
For Sloan, it was a gut punch that stuck.
ECU’s defense had played well. They’d forced mistakes. They were in position to close out a ranked SEC team. Instead, a single wild fumble return became the lasting image of the night, and the Pirates walked out of Memphis with nothing but regret and what-ifs.
That’s the kind of loss you don’t forget, especially when you’re a walk-on living in every detail.
And yet, that memory is part of why Sloan has always kept an eye on Kentucky from afar. He saw the passion in the stands. He saw how much it meant for a program like Kentucky to win that kind of game. When the opportunity came to jump to Lexington as offensive coordinator, it wasn’t just a random SEC logo calling.
He knew what this place could be when it’s humming.
Now he gets to be on the other side
The best part of this whole full-circle story? Sloan is now in the exact position he used to resent, the SEC program with the logo that gets the benefit of the doubt.
Sloan’s not pretending the Liberty Bowl doesn’t still sting a little. He’s not pretending he doesn’t remember every detail of that Jenkins return. But he’s also not hiding the fact that he’s happy to be on the side that usually gets the whistle now.
For Kentucky fans, that’s an easy guy to embrace: someone who’s felt what it’s like to play against this program on a big stage and now wants to help it become the kind of team that breaks hearts for a living.
If his offense ends up being as chaotic and unforgettable as that Liberty Bowl finish, BBN won’t just remember Jenkins’ rumble. They’ll start adding Sloan’s name to the list of people who turned Kentucky into the problem other fan bases still complain about 15 years later.