Saturday night was one to forget for the Kentucky football program. Mark Stoops took his undefeated Wildcat team to Athens looking to give No. 1 Georgia a scare.
The Bulldogs have looked susceptible to conference challenges this season but had no issues with Kentucky. Georgia jumped out to a 14-0 lead in the first 10 minutes and coasted to a 51-13 victory. Kentucky fans were angry with the performance and expressed their displeasure to Stoops on his weekly call in show.
The 11th-year Kentucky coach had a simple message for disgruntled Kentucky fans.
“Fans have that right (to complain),” Stoops said. “I give it to them. I’d just encourage them to donate more because that’s what those teams are doing. I can promise you Georgia bought some pretty good players. You’re allowed to these days and we could use some help and that’s what they look like, you know what I mean? When you have 85 of them, so I encourage anybody that’s disgruntled to pony up some more.”
Stoops comments were more of a call for financial support from Kentucky fans and boosters than it was a shot at Georgia. As the veteran coach remarked, it’s legal to pay players in the new NIL era of college football. But that doesn’t mean his claim that Kirby Smart and Georgia “bought some pretty good players” is going to go over well in Athens.
Alabama coach Nick Saban and Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher were apart of the most public coaching feud in recent years last offseason when Saban made a similar claim about the Aggies’ No. 1 recruiting class in the 2022 cycle.
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Saban’s purpose was the same as Stoops’. The Alabama coach was talking at a function with Crimson Tide boosters and was attempting to drum up more NIL support. But Fisher took exception to his former boss’s comments.
We’re unlikely to see a similar feud from Smart and Stoops in the middle of the season but it’s easy to wonder how Smart took the offhanded comment.
Stoops is Kentucky football’s winningest ever head coach but has often struggled against top competition and traditional SEC East powers in his time in Lexington. Kentucky has just two wins over Tennessee in Stoops era and had just one win over Florida before getting over the hump and winning three straight.
But Kentucky’s struggles against the elite of the SEC are most prevalent against Georgia who the Wildcats have not defeated in Stoops’ 11 seasons as head coach. After dropping a close game against Georgia in Kirby Smart’s first season, the Wildcats have fallen to the Bulldogs by an average of 20 points over the last seven seasons.
Tennessee football faces both of the SEC East foes in the final seven weeks of the college football season. The Vols travel to Lexington on Oct. 28 before hosting Georgia on Nov. 18.
