Stoops' new tactic after losing to Vanderbilt? Saying embarrassing things

We all respond to losses differently, as do head coaches of football teams. However, it seems as if Kentucky's Head Football Coach has chosen the best way to deal with a loss is to stick his foot in his mouth. It's not just one comment since the loss; he's now had three hard-to-stomach statements.

Kentucky football lost to Vanderbilt after being favored to win the game by about 13 points before kickoff. They were playing at home, they had a huge crowd behind them, in a night cap game with momentum from a big upset of Ole Miss and a bye week to prepare. They came out and looked unprepared and undisciplined and committed 105 yards worth of penalties. They had two botched field goal attempts (one was an extra point). It was an embarrassing day for the Wildcats, and the person who needs to take the blame is the one in charge of the whole thing, Mark Stoops.

To be fair to Stoops, he did. In his postgame comments, he mentioned how he didn't get his team ready, which was obvious to anyone watching the game. The hard part is, and this is when things began to become a bit embarrassing for Stoops, he started throwing his players under the bus. Essentially, he told reporters that they just weren't listening to them, and he can't figure out why, which is not good. "I'm obviously not getting through to them."

If we stop there, it's fine; it's whatever. He was a frustrated coach, and his players had to execute. Disregard the fact that he is 5-8 coming out of bye weeks and 2-10 in the last 12 SEC games. So, throw out the fact that he isn't getting through to any group of players during a bye week or in home games. He decided to double down on statements that were either wrong or just weird.

The first was an NIL comment about Kentucky and Vanderbilt. He said, "You know Vandy went out and made it happen with the NIL. Do you see the amount of publicity Diego is getting? Once we get a NIL support system like that, we will be able to compete in the SEC."

Pause for a second. What?! Two things need to be said; the first is that I don't love how coaches now use NIL as their excuse for losing games. Well, if we could just pay kids more, we would win more. That's just not good enough.

Second, Vanderbilt has nowhere near the same NIL opportunities as Kentucky. Now, it's hard to know for sure how that all gets divvied up. Kentucky definitely seems to use more of their NIL for basketball as it is currently set up. But the reality in this situation is this, Diego Pavia is a 0-star quarterback coming from New Mexico State and was probably offered very little NIL money, some reports even say $0 (though since it's not public, this can't be substantiated). While Brock Vandagriff, Kentucky's quarterback, was a 5-star recruit coming to the Wildcats from Georgia. It also isn't known how much his NIL is worth, but it's easy to see how it would have taken something, and most likely something nice, to get him to Kentucky.

Of course, this is hard to prove, but looking at it on paper makes you think Kentucky had more NIL to spend on their quarterback. Even if Stoops is right, I don't like the look, and I think it's silly to blame the NIL for losing.

If that was the end, it's an eye-roll and a move-along. However, on Monday, he said something else ridiculous and a head-scratcher. He was asked why his star freshman runningback isn't getting more playing time, and Stoops said this:

Of course, he is saying this in the context of "he needs to do the little things the right way." He will get more playing time when Wilcox can listen to his coaches better. I hope there is more to this. Not playing one of your best players because he doesn't tie his shoes is stupid.

This isn't a new phenomenon or a Kentucky-specific problem. Uncoachable kids are the bain of every coach's existence. However, I also have two problems with this. The first is don't publicly throw your kids under the bus, especially by name. It's one thing to say the whole team isn't listening well to me. It's completely another to say, "Wilcox doesn't tie his shoes."

The second thing I have a problem with is that we are seeing this as a consistent problem for Stoops. He even referenced it in his post-game comments after Vanderbilt. Why aren't your players listening to you? If it's just an isolated 5-star player who thinks he knows better, whatever. But if they are continuing to ignore your coaching, it's a coach problem, not a player problem.

I don't love how Stoops is handling this loss to Vanderbilt, and you shouldn't either. Stoops needs to right the ship and stop pointing fingers. And truly, stop saying dumb and embarrassing things.