Bob Stoops' indirect role in changing the culture at UK
It's Mark Stoops who has made his mark on Kentucky's program over the last five years, but his brother, Bob, recently retired from coaching, has indirectly impacted the Cats' program.
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Mark Stoops never coached with his brother, Bob, when he was the head coach of the Oklahoma Sooners, but there's still more than just a family connection between OU and UK these days.
Yes, the Stoops brothers are a tight-knit group and it makes sense that many of their emphases and philosophies would be the same.
But strength coaches Corey Edmond and Mark Hill also coached at Oklahoma under the older Stoops, who recently resigned, passing the torch to Lincoln Riley in Norman.
When Edmond had the playoff poster bearing Kentucky's name on one of the bracket lines put up in the weight room, that had a little something to do with what he learned during Bob Stoops' tenure at OU.
“That’s something we actually got from Bob Stoops,” Edmond told CatsIllustrated.com this week. “When he first got to Oklahoma he said, ‘This is our expectation.’ That team hadn’t won in three or four years. He came in right off the bat and said, ‘This is our expectation.’"
Stoops' approach paid off.
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He took a once-proud Oklahoma program mired in mediocrity and promptly turned it around, first establishing respectability to outsiders and pride inside the locker room, and quickly winning a national championship in his second year at the school.
But isn't it easier to have those kinds of expectations and talk the talk when you're at Oklahoma as opposed to Kentucky?
"...when you’ve been under that and you understand that," Edmond said, referring to the attitude Bob Stoops established in Norman, "it has nothing to do with what color helmet you have on, what program you're at or the history behind the program. Forget that. We have today.”
Just today.
Five years ago not many people probably would have imagined that Kentucky would be recruiting at the level it has recruited at. Only one year ago not many people might have imagined that Mark Stoops would have more job security and a higher level of popularity than most of his SEC coaching peers. So today is all you have.
“When (Bob Stoops) came in the room he said, ‘We’re going to win a national championship,’” Edmond recalled. “We say the same thing here. It doesn’t matter what your program's name is or what emblem’s on the helmet.”
Hearing that message from Mark Stoops is surely the more common and more immediately impactful way that Kentucky's current players are getting the message. But his brother, Bob, has indirectly had his own hand in changing hearts and minds. Kentucky's strength coaches bought into what he was selling and they're still carrying the message.
