When Cats Illustrated spoke with former Kentucky receiver and legacy Dicky Lyons, Jr., recently it was intended to be a part of an ongoing series featuring players from the past.

The series isn't only about reflections and memories. But Lyons had so much to say about the future, in part based on what he saw and lived at Kentucky, that it quickly became clear he's able to articulate a very clear vision for the program and how he believes it has to operate in order to succeed.

No one who knows Lyons or remembers his style in dealing with the media will accuse him of mincing words, of obscuring his personality or of hiding his true feelings.

Lyons just doesn't seem to care about the unwritten assumptions that cause some coaches and players to speak in generalities or to avoid uncomfortable subjects. At this point given Lyons' reputation for straight shooting, so to speak, even those that might not like his message can probably still find a way to co-exist with Lyons.

That's in part due to the fact that Lyons' love for the Kentucky football program is undeniable. As Wildcat football diehards know, his father played for Kentucky.

Lyons told Cats Illustrated, as he's surely said many times in the past, that his plan was to always attend Kentucky to play for the Wildcats. No offer from any other program, big or small, would have changed that plan. That made the staff's recruiting job with Lyons much easier than it otherwise would have been, but that was a kind of luxury that's normally enjoyed frequently by other SEC schools much more than the Wildcats.

On that point, Lyons' very early conviction that Kentucky football was for him, the former Wildcat firmly believes that any plan for success in Lexington must prominently feature players and coaches who want to be at Kentucky. Not just players who chose Kentucky as the best available option. But players who pick Kentucky over other schools because it's the only choice they want to make.

The problem, of course, is that most of the players who would fall into that category are from Kentucky. Lyons doesn't seem too hung up on recruiting rankings or the industry as a whole, but almost everyone would acknowledge the Commonwealth doesn't produce the quantity or quality of the other states with SEC schools.

So there's the quandry, or one of them, that has forever befuddled or destroyed Kentucky football coaches and the aspirations of the most faithful fans. When faced with such scarcity, players and of selling points compared to its rivals, how does the Kentucky football program find a winning formula? And in recruiting, a winning formula is just putting the pieces into place. The pieces, of course, being the right personalities with the right talent and the right work ethic.

It's not easy, and Lyons knows it. Speaking even as a player who was a part of some of Kentucky's better teams in recent decades, Lyons is quick to acknowledge that there's just no easy solution.

"At Kentucky it's going to be hard for anybody," Lyons said as he discussed the challenges facing Mark Stoops right now and in the months and years ahead.

It's telling that Lyons would so easily make that concession to the cynics, and it's telling because he's long known that and it never seemed to affect his own decision. Being a part of the build was what he wanted, because he wanted Kentucky. That's the quality Lyons believes Kentucky has to target in the recruiting enterprise. In other words, it's obvious that every Kentucky staff has to recruit the best athletes at the top of their wish lists. But Lyons' conviction is that it's also important that those players, so wanted by the staff, feel the same way in turn.

That makes sense as a part of cultivating the right mix of personalities in the program. When times get hard, common sense says the player who knew it would be hard and picked Kentucky anyways would be more likely to stick around, work through it and stay positive than the player who picked Kentucky because he was sold a bill of goods or who might have been more on the fence about the program.

Lyons' sober assessment of the challenges facing the program doesn't mean that he doubts Mark Stoops as Kentucky's coach. If he does, he didn't say it, and Lyons isn't known to hold back.

"The good thing about not being on scholarship is you can't get in trouble for what you say," Lyons said, promising that he's not afraid to step on anyone's toes. "My own personal feeling is that I've been a little upset with the direction the program's taken. Ever since we left, that's just my own personality. We went to back-to-back-to-back bowl games. Three straight bowl games and three straight bowl wins."

But Lyons didn't fault Stoops for that. He didn't single out Joker Phillips for too much criticism, although he did share some thoughts on his hiring and tenure. Lyons actually gave Stoops a vote of confidence.

"I think Stoops has as good a chance as any (to win at Kentucky). You just have to wait for the right players to come in," Lyons said. "Then it clicks. I don't know the recruiting class they have. I just remember from our time, we weren't that highly recruited. It was just that magic of all of a sudden we had some three stars, Keenan Burton, Rafael Little, Jacob Tamme, Tony Dixon, and all of a sudden (Micah) Johnson comes together and guys start playing up to their abilities. More talent followed. Wesley Woodyard and some guys. But you've gotta wait for that to happen."

Lyons pointed out the fact that that successful crop of players didn't have the highest recruiting rankings or the longest offer sheets. But he's not one who believes that it's better for Kentucky to just target blue collar players and shy away from the recruitment of those more highly ranked players.

His thinking?

"I've got friends who are coaches now," Lyons said. "When you tell them about a five star and they're at a down program they're like, 'We're not even going to attempt to go get that guy.' My whole question was like, 'Why not?' Coming from building my own practice it the financial services industry, the more people you talk to the better. If you talk to 1,000 four stars and you get one, you're good."

Of course, Stoops' staff hasn't shied away from recruiting higher ranked players. That hasn't been the stumbling block for this staff, which will have six new members in the 2016 season as Stoops' fourth campaign begins.

One challenge Stoops has faced, and will now face more than ever, is a lack of staff continuity. Before this offseason Stoops had to deal with coaches leaving, and he even asked some to move on. That happens everywhere. But to replace six assistant coaches in an offseason before a pivotal fourth year? Well, that's not ideal, no matter how good you feel about the guys you brought in. Time may prove the changes to be beneficial, and even right away. But most head coaches wouldn't choose those circumstances.

Lyons has said that finding players who want to be at Kentucky is an important ingredient, he believes, in building a winning program. That's part of culture and it's related to many things from the formation and development of players to how the team responds to adversity, how hard they work, how well they relate to one another, and how likely they are to stick together.

Another deeply-held Lyons conviction is that it was important to for him and other players at Kentucky to see -- and presumably that it's still important for Wildcats now to see -- that their coaches want to be at Kentucky just as badly as those coaches hope their players want to be there.

That's a tricky issue that some players know more about than others, and some fans may be oblivious to,. Assistant coaches don't tend to stay in one spot for a long time, and the ladder either leads up or down.

Over the course of a season and in the offseason assistant coaches with aspirations -- that would be all of them -- are in contact with other coaches and football people who might have a role to play in their future endeavors. Lyons said the nature of those dealings and the attitude and intentions of the coaches on a staff is a demonstration of how bad the coaches want to be at Kentucky or wherever they are. And just as it's better to have players who want to be where they're at, for countless reasons, it's similarly desirable for their coaches to be content right at home.

That's obviously a complicated part of a program's culture and it would be related to how happy assistants are to be working with a coach, how well the head coach builds and maintains relationships and whether a staff member or the staff as a whole is able to function and move beyond the worst adversity. Some staffs don't and those generally break up. Others do, and the result is often greater continuity.

One of the staples of Kentucky's football teams during the Rich Brooks years, which are Lyons' as well, was the presence of plenty of well-established and respected leaders. Lyons was one, and the others are well-known.

But another fact of life in Lexington was a happy staff, at least so far as most have depicted the situation. Lyons could point to Brooks' ability to manage a staff and keep assistant coaches happy, just as David Jones told Cats Illustrated this week that Brooks' amazing involvement with players down to the walk ons was part of his success in keeping the team.

Keeping a happy staff isn't magic. It's about relationships, respect and trust. Like anything else.

"Coach Brooks showed a lot about commitment when we were there," Lyons said. "When he did hire, he was always hiring from within. He gave coaches a shot. He gave (Steve) Brown a shot. He would stick with them.

"Even with (Ron) Hudson, the offensive coordinator, he did not want to lose him. From what we heard internally in the locker room, he didn't. I don't know if that's true or not. Hudson was saying, 'I'm not getting it done. I think I have to move on.' I don't know if that's how it was, but from the player's perspective (Brooks' appeared to say), 'I want to keep everybody on staff.' With Coach (Steve) Ortmayer and (others) we were development a family and a close, tight-knit program. He was saying, 'I believe in my guys.' They always put the blame on the coaches, not on the players."

But Lyons, ever the straight-shooter, seemed to express his opinion that Brooks' loyalty and focus on in-house promotions was a double-edged sword.

It contributed to a happy staff, to continuity, and subsequently to a better team as well, not to mention a good example for the players.

But Lyons actually believes the 'keep it in the program' preference in hiring was partly responsible for Kentucky's inability to capitalize on its momentum from breakthrough seasons while he was there. Not only does Lyons believe it was one factor that made progress slower, but he agreed - on some level, at least - that the focus might have been symptomatic of something else.

Could the administrative, hiring, recruiting and football decisions of those days -- the days of Kentucky's rapid assent into the nation's college football consciousness -- have been more motivated by the fear of slipping back into obscurity than by the ambition to shatter any supposed ceilings that existed?

"I think so," Lyons said, acknowledging that the theory might have merit. "The comment I make all the time is that 'scared money don't make money.' That's a hard decision to make. You've got budgets. The future of the program, the money, hiring internally. I'm sure it was more efficient financially (to hire from inside the program) than to go out and try to get a big name. They thought they could do it internally."

The biggest example of the internal hiring, of course, is the now infamous Joker Phillips era. Without going in-depth on his thoughts on the Phillips era, Lyons did say that he believes it's unfortunate that coaches are only given "two, three or four years" to implement their vision and see it through. In that sense, he may have sympathy for Phillips and how things went. But he clearly sees some potential pitfalls in the mentality that motivated that hire, and the head coach in waiting tag before it, as well as some of the other promotions.

"I liked where their head was," Lyons said of those making decisions affecting the program at that time. "How do you turn around Kentucky? I do believe that you have to find somebody who loves the University of Kentucky and the football program."

Just like he believes in finding coaches who want to be at Kentucky, and just as he emphasized the importance of finding recruits who want to be there as well.

Sense a theme?

From the top down, Lyons' vision shaped by his experience in football, business and life is that success and sustained success requires people who are happy where they are at, and who aren't looking for greener pastures or second guessing their choices.

Although Lyons liked the decision to pick a coach who wanted to be at Kentucky, he indicated that in many respects the people you hire also need to have a willingness to try new things, and indeed, an acceptance that failure is possible.

It is Kentucky football, after all.

At Alabama a conservative approach to hiring, program management and brand promotion might still help power a quality era for the program. Schools like that have a margin for error and plenty going for it.

But at Kentucky, Lyons seemed to agree, conservative approaches to many things doesn't seem to make too much sense. It almost seemed as though Lyons is convinced that the cautious, hire internal, stick with the tried and tested mentality isn't the best formula anywhere. He didn't say it, but it seemed to be a thought he was getting at.

"I always joke that they should hire me as the football coach (at Kentucky)," Lyons told Cats Illustrated. "Why? I'm not a football coach. If you hired me I'm going to do everything in my power to be the best football coach in the nation, but if I don't make it then I'm gonna go back to what I was doing."

And he'd be okay with that.

In other words, Lyons wants coaches who aren't afraid to fail. Or at least coaches who make decisions and run their program in a way that's more driven by ambition and forward-thinking than by caution, comfortable approaches and perhaps even fear.

Was the Phillips hire more a sign of Kentucky's fear of its own past than a vote of confidence or a statement of hope in the future?

It was often said that if Phillips succeeded, he'd stay at Kentucky. The assumption being, of course, that Kentucky would struggle to keep a winner otherwise. It made Phillips more attractive, surely. It wouldn't be fair to reduce the hiring to that. He had paid his dues, had the experience, knew Brooks' program, was part of the current success and he loved Kentucky -- one of Lyons' own favorite characteristics of coaches. Lyons didn't speculate on any of that or address it, but the head coach in waiting move was a unique enough choice that it should prompt a close examination of not only the process but the underlying attitudes and assumptions that led to the move.

When it was suggested that perhaps the coach in waiting move put a lid on the enthusiasm that normally comes with a new coach, since the emphasis would be on continuity and staying the course rather than a brave new world with no ceilings, Lyons took up the idea as possible but expounded on it in his own way.

"When you have a coach in waiting it's like a recruiting tool to say, 'We've got the same program. We've got the same practices. The same model. The same people are going to be around.' You're telling that to the commitments, saying that there's not going to be a huge change. It's the same program that you like now. I think that's one step."

Lyons understands the strategy, and if a person believes in staying the course then that has to be the packaging.

But here's the kicker, at least for the former Kentucky receiver.

"The only problem is that other than people at the University of Kentucky, nobody knew who Joker Phillips was," Lyons said. "That's the thing I was talking about. You just won three straight bowl games. You've got a rising program with some top-tier talent. If you're looking for a new head coach who might want to come in, they had a lot more opportunity."

Lyons did acknowledge that the hiring of assistant coach Tee Martin was an example of the program making a big and bold step in the direction of something new. He was on board with that all the way.

But to Lyons it's not just that hiring internally and a conservative approach is a double-edged sword, helping cohesiveness but threatening a leveling out.

Lyons believes that Brooks' own tendency was so driven by sticking to his method and staying the course that it would have been nearly impossible for Kentucky's coach at the time to have made the sweeping changes that might have significantly raised the program's ceiling.

Does that mean that the good in Rich Brooks -- the persistence and unwavering belief in his way -- may have guided the program from darkness to some light, but simultaneously could have been the root of the conservative mindset that prevented changes of a large scale that might have changed history and capitalized on the moment?

"Maybe," Lyons said. "He left before he could see what was going to happen. Leaving when he did, he had the chance to get the players on to Joker. So it's, 'Okay, now I did what I was supposed to do.'"

For right or for wrong - and it's worth noting the results weren't favorable - the choice of seamless transition led to perhaps smoother sailing in the early days of the Phillips' era, but little in the way of a new reputation for the program.

What of leadership?

Lyons is often singled out as one of many players on those teams who helped set the tone with hard work and a do it by example approach that can't be faked, only lived by those who had bought in.

Over time, into the Phillips era, the number of players that most observers can now single out as having those leadership intangibles shrunk, perhaps dramatically. Losing will impact that and perhaps artificially as fan's perceptions are concerned. But there was seemingly more of a leadership void.

So how is leadership transferred from one class to the next? How closely is next year's leadership dynamic related to the young player falling in line before stepping up a role he's earned rather than feels entitled to, and how significant is the task of recruiting players who have those qualities?

Although Lyons is never shy in speaking his mind, he had the humility to admit that he simply doesn't know what makes good leadership.

"It's kinda hard," he said. "You can't teach leadership. If you had asked me about turning around a program I'd say it's finding good character and people who are all in. Everybody knows my commitment to Kentucky. That's where my father played. I didn't strongly consider any other school. I knew where I was going. That rubs off. You can smell that when you see somebody. Same thing with Burton, Tamme and Woodyard. Just a natural born leader."

And according to Lyons, leadership isn't transferred.

"You can't pass that down," he said.

The force of example may be real, but for some players it's either in their constitution or its not, at least given their present circumstances. Or so Lyons believes.

"You think about Andre Woodson and when you have guys who are so committed to one thing. I don't know how you pass that down," Lyons said.

Leadership also doesn't just look one way, nor are leaders perfect. Sometimes leaders are the products in part of their own imperfections. Lyons pointed out that he and Keenan Burton once got into a fist fight, and he actually attributed their friendship and overall strength of their relationship to what was born from the aftermath of that breaking point.

The experience of the players in a program is constantly changing.

Those younger players who were expected to assume the mantle of leadership following those most successful Cats may have been better leaders -- some of them -- that history now credits them as being, even if the wins, losses and overall public opinion of the era tanked long before it officially ended.

What might have led to the difference in leadership, in tone and in the program's culture?

A player committing to Kentucky at it's lowest point, with Brooks' future uncertain, is probably a different kind of personality than a player two years later who finds Kentucky attractive because it's now seen as on the rise. The latter kind of player can still be a leader, but it seems obvious that those types may be a little less inclined to embracing the suffering of building from the bottom. The recruit who chooses the program in the valley, with little apparent hope of resurrection, is very different than most others. Either he didn't have many other options (which was surely true in some cases), or he did and he's just unique. Perhaps those types are more inclined to masochism or even hopefulness that borders on naivety.

But that was Lyons and so many others.

Any attempt to understand or identify the failure to duplicate leadership from those years to the Phillips' era is speculation.

Were Lyons a coach at Kentucky, he'd probably want a team full of players that are in some ways similar to him.

And who was he?

He's well known by now, but an anecdote from his freshman season sums up his personality and his lack of inhibitions pretty well.

"I can remember when I was a freshman and wanting to play," Lyons said. "We're getting destroyed by Louisville. I'm looking at coach like, 'Why aren't you putting me in?' He's like, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'The guy out there's not getting it done.' I said, 'I know in practice I haven't gotten it done, but hell, I'm here. Put me in and see what happens. You get frustrated at that. You see a losing program not taking the risk of putting new guys out there. Then in the 2006 season you had Stevie Johnson, me and Tamme, and all of a sudden it's like, hey, what if this had happened a couple of years before?"

If Brooks reads quotes like that he might point out that it could have been more complicated based on circumstances. He would probably agree, however, that his method was his method, and for Brooks the method won the day. Even if the team didn't win, the overall approach didn't change.

Good for keeping the ship afloat and alive in bad times? Yes, says Lyons. A factor that limited Kentucky and perhaps discouraged the more urgent and forward-thinking approach to everything that was so necessary as the program had that slimmer of an opportunity to change things? Well, very possibly.

So was Brooks the man Kentucky needed, but a man who could only take the program so far? That's impossible to say, but it is at least only fair to point out that the situation he passed on was far better than the one he inherited. It couldn't have gotten any worse, of course, but Brooks' steady approach did lead to the five straight bowl appearances, and that's more than a footnote.

Lyons knows that and he doesn't seem to totally begrudge the hallowed Brooks method. It's clear that he doesn't take Brooks' decisions personally, or those of the athletics department as an offense against him and his teammates. Rather, Lyons has the self-awareness to simply attribute his take to his own personality.

And maybe that's why he's not a coach.

"I think when you're getting into the coaching world the first thing on your resume is that you're stubborn as hell," Lyons said. "If you don't, they don't hire you. I think every coach is somewhat of a stubborn know it all type of a personality. If not, he can't have the confidence to know what he has to do. I think it was stubbornness (with Brooks). I think with years and years of experience building a successful program at Oregon, when you've done it before in the past and you know that you know how, that's it. It's hard to make your first million dollars but once you've made a million dollars you know how and it's repeatable. It's going to take take. It was, 'This is my program, I'm going to stick to it.'"

Lyons' take on Brooks fits very nicely with the overall perception of Brooks' tenure in Oregon. He took on a job that was historically not nearly as prestigious as it is today. Not even close, and in fact, the polar opposite in some respects. Brooks implemented his approach and stuck to it in Eugene. It wasn't always successful. Not by any stretch of the imagination. There were more losing seasons than winning campaigns. But the method remained, and finally there was the breakthrough Rose Bowl appearance in 1994.

The lesson from Oregon is that Brooks isn't spectacular, he's not flashy and he can be stubborn with the best of the most stubborn coaches. But those years with the Ducks also demonstrated that Brooks wasn't afraid of adversity, he didn't have eyes down the road at greener pastures, he was happy with his lot in life and in coaching, and at the very least that consistent method kept the people around him generally happy, with the win total serving as a bit of a variable.

Given where Kentucky was as a program before Brooks it's easy to understand why that kind of coach, with all the good and the bad and the eccentricities, would have been attractive. Mitch Barnhart certainly knew these things when he hired him. It was a program that had tried the approach minus inhibitions, what with Hal Mumme, Mike Leach, probation from recruiting violations and stadium expansion in the not too distant past, followed by Guy Morriss' depature. It might be easier to understand why slow and steady was then preferable to a big talker who didn't believe there was a ceiling he couldn't smash.

Lyons understands all of that, and it's not personal. He speaks highly of Brooks on so many points and remembers countless moments of team life with Brooks and the squad fondly.

But Lyons has his own views, and he's bound to butt heads philosophically with Brooks, who would be his polar opposite.

Lyons recalled that Brooks was the same person after almost every game. Win or lose, moral victory or humiliating defeat or even monumental win, Rich Brooks was the constant. That surely had some value, but it wasn't Lyons' favorite part of him.

"After we won the LSU game, I mean, we beat the number one team in the nation in a triple overtime win," Lyons said. "Our main focus was staying focused on the next game. Don't let your heads get too big. My whole personality, and it's just me and I'm not a coach nor do I manage a team, but I'd have pumped us up and tried to get us feeling like we're the number one team in the nation. Like, 'Now try and beat us.' I would have tried to get them so confident that we could do nothing but win. But staying humble and confident were his main deal. He didn't want us to get ahead of ourselves. So that's what we tried to do. I don't know what our final record was right off the top of my head, but I don't think we finished too strong."

And that is evidence for Lyons that Brooks' attempt to keep everyone grounded, at least as he interpreted it, was the wrong approach for after the LSU game. Without attributing blame for later conservative moves to Brooks, that critique would be right in line with how Lyons felt about the program's management.

Bravado just was not Rich Brooks. Lyons might be completely convinced the program needed a dose of bravado and maybe even some naivety. But at the end of the day he knows that wouldn't have been Brooks.

Lyons seems to be at peace with his time at Kentucky, and certainly seems to be going along just fine. He's married and after saving up some cash working to help clean up following the BP oil spill in the gulf, Lyons started his own financial planning practice.

At one point he wanted to be a sportscaster but ultimately decided he didn't like what went on behind the scenes in that line of work. It was Greg Couch, the brother of Tim Couch, who mentored Lyons professionally and encouraged him to join up with Northwestern Mutual.

All of Lyons' recent life events followed his being cut from the UFL, and that effectively ended his football career. Taking off the playing jersey for the last time isn't easy for many players at any levels, no matter the level of their success. But Lyons has never been the kind of guy to sit around and hold onto something that needs to change, and he prides himself on being a go-getter who tries to live in the solution rather than dwell on the problem.

So football ended, and this phase of life began.

Lyons tries to make it to Kentucky for one football game each year, and he also likes to make it to the spring game in Commonwealth Stadium. Through the internet he stays in contact with former teammates at Kentucky, and he watches as much of the Wildcats as he can during the Mark Stoops era. Living in Louisiana, where his family is from (he and his wife life 45 minutes from both his side and her side of the family), Kentucky football isn't exactly a hot topic. But there's a local lady associated with the University of Louisville who keeps him updated on what she hears.

"My pawpaw's funny," Lyons added. "He just loved me playing at Kentucky and he was always on message boards and websites. He's retired and that's all he does. He follows UK football. He'll call me one week and say, 'Boy, let me tell you...'"

Thus, Kentucky football remains a part of Lyons' life. And you can bet he'll have an opinion he's not afraid to share.