Hard though it may be to believe, Kentucky just wrapped up its tenth recruiting class under head coach Mark Stoops.

Not only does Stoops have the best on-field coaching resume of any coach in UK history other than perhaps Bear Bryant, he is now the most accomplished recruiter the program has had, at least in the modern internet recruiting industry age since player and team rankings have been mass produced and calculated.

Over the days ahead Cats Illustrated will be commemorating ten years of Mark Stoops' and his staff's recruiting efforts, because it has been one of the biggest stories in SEC football during the last decade.

To start the series off here are ten lessons I've taken from the last ten years of Kentucky recruiting under Stoops.

Winning really does give you a chance to elevate how you typically recruit.

There have been two or three great windows of opportunity for Kentucky to improve its recruiting efforts based on a wave of momentum created by on-field successes, and the Wildcats have capitalized on those opportunities to greater or lesser extents each time.

I'm thinking here about the win over top-10 Louisville on the road during Lamar Jackson's Heisman season. Certainly winning 10 games with several top-25 victories including a Citrus Bowl win against Penn State back in 2018. And now there's another, with another double digits in the win column and a second Citrus Bowl win over a reputable Big Ten program, this time Iowa.

UK followed the 2018 season almost immediately with the Class of 2020. That year Kentucky signed eight offensive or defensive line recruits who were rated four or five stars. Only Clemson, Alabama, and a few others could match that and we're now seeing the benefits in the youth movement on UK's defensive line just a couple of years into those guys' college careers.

Kentucky has the No. 13 class in the country in the late signing period right now and that's the highest ranking the Cats have ever had at this juncture, a full five spots ahead of where the 2014 class finished in Stoops' previous best class on paper.

Put stock in the rankings, but don't put too much stock in them.

Leave room for uncertainty. I've written about college sports and/or recruiting for two decades now. That's tough to believe.

For a long time I spent a lot of energy and hot air trying to convince people that "recruiting rankings really do matter." I'll probably die on that hill so long as there are good, competent people involved in the rankings, and I think they are.

The rankings don't get everything right. Then again, nobody says they do. When almost every Division I signee is eventually evaluated, discussed, and ranked there will be plenty of misses. Every year on draft night we see triumphant trolls pointing out this or that unranked or two star player defied the odds and became a first day selection. But what were the odds? What percent of two-star or unranked players did that?

Long ago I ran the numbers and at that time, only Missouri and Tennessee were outliers in the SEC in terms of recruiting and actual results not being aligned. That was over a long period of time, too. Mizzou under Pinkel vastly overperformed, Tennessee at least until recently underperformed. But everyone else in the league was right about where the rankings said they should be.

Whether analysts get it right more than they get it wrong, enough work goes into it and enough access is available at unique events that you should pay attention to what analysts say about players.

But ... don't spend all your time arguing with people who say rankings don't matter. Try to remind yourself that there really is uncertainty. We really don't know how someone will click with S&C coaches, how they'll thrive in a given system, how they'll respond to not playing a snap in their first year, how they'll respond to being away from home, how they'll get along with their position coach, whether they'll get injured, fall into the wrong crowd, lose their love for the game, or something else.

The wake-up call for me on this point was during this very Stoops era, when you start to look at the late additions in previous classes who would not have had spots available if others hadn't decommitted. And in more than one or two cases, supposedly hurtful decommitments led to Kentucky careers for even more successful, better players.

Yes, rankings matter. Quite a bit. You'd better be recruiting Top-20 (or preferably Top-10) classes if you want to win SEC or national titles. But signing a Top-20 class doesn't mean it will be one of a coach's best, and failing to sign one doesn't mean you should write anyone off.

Vince Marrow has been the best recruiter Kentucky's ever had.

There are other coaches on the staff who deserve a lot of credit for some of their recruiting. Former assistants and current assistants alike.

But when we're talking about Kentucky's recruiting over the last decade nobody has done more, nobody has done close to as much, as Vince Marrow himself.

Several years ago I ran the numbers myself and found that about 40% of all Stoops-era commitments were recruited with Marrow as the lead. That number probably hasn't changed much.

At first it was Marrow pulling in obscene numbers from Ohio. Then, he moved to Kentucky and turned the program's fortunes around in its backyard. Along the way he has ventured into other states to land players like Josh Paschal, Lonnie Johnson, Terry Wilson, and many others.

There has not been another coach at Kentucky who approaches what Marrow has done for the program as an assistant coach. What probably doesn't get mentioned enough is the four- or five-year impact and experience for players after Marrow has recruited them. For many, he's the coach they go to when they need someone while they're in Lexington.

His recruiting success for a full decade could have only happened for someone who tries to do right by the people he recruits. It would have fallen apart by now if he didn't, so he deserves the credit he has gotten.

I've said before, if Marrow were at Alabama or Georgia he would be one of those assistants pulling in multiple five-star guys.

Another big part of his job that doesn't show up in commitment numbers is how he manages so many relationships and situations over long periods of time. That takes 24/7/365 willingness to deal with anything and everything that comes up.

He makes Stoops' job easier and he's a big part of Stoops' success. More than any other individual who has been there along the way.

It's hard for me to imagine Marrow not being with Stoops even though other programs have made runs at him. With the recent raise and Kentucky winning 10 games twice in four years, it's even harder to imagine him leaving.

Don't ignore the importance of secondary recruiters.

The follow-up to the above point is that other coaches deserve credit even though Marrow's contributions have been invaluable and tough to overstate.

When recruits talk about the process they tend to talk about their lead recruiter. We tend to write about the lead recruiter. It becomes a very visible part of any narrative.

But along the way, keep in mind that a lot of other relationships are being forged and are influencing where all of these kids will end up.

If you love your primary recruiter but hate the strength and conditioning staff at a school then you probably aren't going there. Many players have talked about Corey Edmond, Mark Hill, and UK's S&C program as being big factors in their decisions. For some of them it might have been the most important factor.

Also keep in mind that input and evaluation is something that involves the whole staff. Coordinators sign off on players they think can thrive in their scheme. Strength coaches will size a player's body, measurables, and work ethic up to help Stoops and those coordinators or position coaches determine what someone's true athletic potential might be.

Academic tutors, player personnel staff members, and students working tirelessly in seeming anonymity behind the scenes don't tend to get headlines but they're an integral part of the operation. When players are visiting they're pulled into the work. They map out plans for players and parents alike. And then of course there's the impact of social media, edits, and assistants to the assistants like CJ Conrad for instance, who help with the day to day work of maintaining the program's relationship with players so someone like Marrow or Stoops can lock 'em down at the end.

UK should always prioritize Ohio from here on out.

Historically one of Kentucky's biggest issues as a football program has been the issue of local talent.

Talent both in quantity and quality in the Commonwealth has been on the rise but even now the pool of players to draw from is smaller than in any other SEC state. Arkansas may not be far off some years. Kentucky may even have more talent some years as a state, but you get the idea. The challenge remains.

The big impact of Kentucky prioritizing Ohio has been the end of a local recruiting deficit as a major disadvantage. Stoops and coaches everywhere will now talk about a "six-hour (driving) radius" they will prioritize in recruiting.

For Kentucky, Ohio really has been like in-state recruiting territory. It hasn't so much been UK drawing from one part of Ohio where it's strong, but all over the state on the basis of connections largely held by Marrow. Lakota West, Archbishop Moeller, Huber Heights, Cardinal Mooney ... you're familiar with the schools, and those connections are not going away so long as Marrow is at UK.

But the bigger point here is Ohio should always be part of UK's "in-state" recruiting strategy.

The Commonwealth has right around 4.5 million residents. The state of Ohio has just under 12 million. That's almost three times the population of Kentucky, and it instantly expands the pool of recruits that you consider local.

Of course, recruiting a state doesn't guarantee true success there. You can be assured of landing the numbers you want from a place, but the quality is going to depend on the makeup of your staff, on-field results, and how relationships are managed. There's no reason for Kentucky to ever not have one or two good recruiters blanketing the Buckeye State even in the post-Stoops era. The SEC allure is strong and now UK can sell its own success.

It is no longer a difficult place to recruit.

It took a while for me to get to this point but I no longer view Kentucky as a difficult place to recruit. Maybe if Kentucky had hired another coach other than Stoops I would feel differently, because the results and the history would be different.

But moving forward the old "ceiling" isn't relevant. It has already been destroyed.

Yes, Kentucky is the northernmost school in a southern conference, but it now has access to lots of northern talent for which it's a more southern school. Furthermore, we're living witnesses to the fact that talented players from the South will pick the more northern school if it's stable and a place that wins.

Sure, Kentucky lacks the many decades of winning big and national contention that you see at about half the other schools in the SEC. That's a factor on some level. There are some kids who still look at the logo more than anything else.

But those concerns aren't nearly what they are. Now they're selling winning to players who only remember Kentucky as a good program. Those players tour SEC-level facilities and they're watching a lot of Big Blue alums go into the NFL.

There will be ups and downs in recruiting far into the post-Stoops era but what the last ten years has demonstrated is that there is a clear roadmap to recruiting success at Kentucky. That recruiting can still improve but through financial commitment, avoiding shortcuts, and the SEC's incredible brand there will be no excuse for future Kentucky coaches not to recruit at the level the Wildcats are recruiting at now.

Spreading out and being selective across a bigger map is a better strategy.

Over the last ten years on two separate occasions I've felt like Kentucky became too dependent on one place in terms of where it was drawing talent from.

Early on, when it seems like they would take about half of their class from Ohio, that wasn't ideal. Then again it was the right decision at the time. It was the easiest, best way for Kentucky to make an immediate splash and create new strengths.

But when you take a dozen kids or so from a place there's usually going to be more attrition. When you emphasize one place so much rather than being selective and really careful about who exactly you want for a position or a role, there will be more misses.

The second time this happened was much worse. UK got plenty of good players from Ohio in those early Stoops years. There weren't nearly as many guys who panned out from Kentucky's recruiting blitz in South Florida several years later in the 2017 and 2018 classes. Over the next few years there was so much attrition and the contributions were so modest compared to the numbers derived from that emphasis, it became impossible to justify continuing with those numbers.

Since then UK has recruited better than ever with elite classes 2020 and 2022 classes on paper. I think the biggest reason for that has been that UK has finally been able to leverage its improved brand in different parts of the country. Instead of taking 12 guys from Ohio, they're taking a few. But a few they really like, with fewer question marks. Instead of taking almost 20 guys from South Florida over a short period of time you're seeing several in Michigan, several in Tennessee, several in Georgia, some in Alabama, and now on the east coast.

The concentration of players is more spread out than ever, if you're looking at a map, but I think the results are already speaking for themselves. This requires more people on the staff to really have some success but Kentucky's at a point as a program where that should be expected.

I like guys from outside of the big cities.

Don't get me wrong, I love many bigger cities. Maybe it's just a personal preference. Maybe I'm weighing a few anecdotes too heavily or have allowed them to influence me too much. Maybe I've just talked to a few people who feel very strongly about this.

But all other things being equal I've come to really like guys that come from outside big cities. Whether we're talking about Atlanta, Miami, or even Memphis, there are two reasons for this.

First, there are fewer distractions when you get away from those areas. You'll find plenty of alpha dogs and hard workers who love the game in Detroit and Nashville. There are guys who eat, sleep, and breathe football, especially as a ticket to the top, everywhere.

But all things being equal, I do like guys from the more remote areas. In those small town there aren't as many distractions and football is in the community's DNA so it catches on individually in a way that takes over guy's lives in a different way sometimes.

The main thing is I think a lot of those dense urban areas are overrecruited. You go to Miami thinking you're going to get one kind of kid and sometimes you have to take a different caliber of player because every other school in the country is recruiting there. You're going to be recruiting guys from all kinds of communities and ideally in many different places as I said before, but it's an observation that deserves some consideration even if we're only reflecting on the last decade.

Kentucky doesn't compromise on the prototype and it's better for it.

I noticed pretty early on that Kentucky's staff under Mark Stoops has really prioritized traits. Hand size, wing span, 40-time, shuttle, vertical, bench press. There are plenty of other ways to measure athleticism, physicality, or ceiling. NFL types are obsessed with these things even though they have a great idea of who and what each player is after three or four years of college film at their fingertips.

Measurables matter.

The reason I noticed it is because it stuck out. I've written about a lot of program's recruiting efforts over the years and it's just common for a lot of programs to take shorter corners sometimes. It's common for some programs to take safeties they intend to turn into linebackers or linebackers they intend to turn into ends or ends they plan to turn into tackles.

Kentucky will develop players and move them when they need to, or have to, but they seem a lot more hung up on making sure he has traits - skill traits, physical traits.

This has always made a lot of sense to me for one main reason: Kentucky plays in the SEC. You can scheme, game plan, and get creative on both sides of the ball but at the end of the day the guys you put on the field had better be big enough and strong enough. Otherwise you're not going to win many games.

Alabama, Georgia, and LSU are always able to land the 6'5, 230-pound EDGE defenders with 4.6 40-times. They're Alabama, Georgia, and LSU.

Rather than taking productive or quick tweeners who might have certain good qualities, Kentucky seems to really focus on finding the 6'5, 230-pound guy who might not run a 4.6, but who runs a 4.75 or 4.8 and has the look of someone who can shave a tick off that time. They really focus on finding the corners who have at least the wing span if not the 6'2 build.

If you stand on the field next to Kentucky's team it's going to be a lot more impressive than you'd see even at several other SEC teams. This is partly a result of making the program's line play a core part of its identity, but it is also a result of the staff really focusing on staying big and fast enough as a core part of its philosophy. You cannot take for granted that you will get those things at Kentucky so the conscious emphasis has paid dividends.

How you play determines who you can recruit.

If your quarterback passes for 4,000 yards it doesn't guarantee that you're going to sign a four- or a five-star signal caller the ensuing year but it gives you a much better chance of doing that.

For a good part of the Stoops era, maybe half of it, the program has had a real problem recruiting quarterbacks and wide receivers. The reason for that was simple. They couldn't pass and the receiver play wasn't good enough. That showed up in the numbers and every school that recruited against Kentucky was wise to point those numbers out.

To stack a year of Lynn Bowden at quarterback playing (very impressive) backyard football on top of some years of inconsistent passing was the death knell for Kentucky's chances with most high school offensive skill players.

But in only one year Liam Coen has helped Kentucky totally change that narrative. Everyone saw that Will Levis was one of the SEC's best quarterbacks at the end of last season and instead of going back to the well and running the ball 70% of the time, Coen trusted his quarterback and his instincts enough to continue passing the ball until it really became a strength.

When you have Levis, Chris Rodriguez, and Wan'Dale Robinson on the same team it's not a surprise that the program would be able to recruit the likes of Barion Brown, Dane Key, Tayvion Robinson, and Javon Baker in the same recruiting year.

It's why Kentucky has never had much of a problem landing quality offensive linemen or overachieving physical three-star running backs or rangy defensive backs. Your results become your resume. Ideally you would stay as balanced and complete as possible, to win games first and foremost, but also so you don't have these spots on the field where you're constantly taking a caliber of player you would rather avoid.

This is the first time in a while Kentucky's coaches can recruit a player at any position on the field and not have to worry about the player looking at the stats or coming away from a game wishing they played a different way.