LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- One by one, the bodies are piling up. Sam Pittman. Billy Napier. Brian Kelly. Midseason firings used to be a statement. Now they’re a sport, a kind of SEC Hunger Games.
The only question is who will be next?
Kentucky’s Mark Stoops may not be the betting favorite, but the odds may not always be in his favor.
His Kentucky team enters November with a 2-5 record, an 0-5 mark in SEC play, a 10-game league losing streak and a defense that just gave up 56 points to Tennessee.
Let’s just say, with a record like that on Halloween, you don’t even need a costume. The real thing is scary enough.
On Saturday, the Wildcats visit Auburn, a team they've beaten just once in the past 20 tries. That’s not a rivalry. It’s a recurring nightmare.
For Stoops, it’s a script that might not be flippable.
Mathematically a bowl remains possible. But math is hard. Winning back the fanbase might be tougher than solving one of those Good Will Hunting equations. Blindfolded.
Still, Stoops has fired up the old calculator to give it a try. Last Saturday against Tennessee, if you looked at the offensive numbers -- 330 passing yards and 180 on the ground -- you might’ve thought he was getting somewhere. Until you looked at the defensive numbers.
Still, he doesn’t go to Auburn empty-handed.
He has Cutter Boley. Redshirt freshman quarterback. Tall kid. Good arm. Doesn't seem scared of much.
He’s been the brightest spot in a season otherwise sponsored by Dramamine. Completed 77 percent of his passes over the last two games. Threw for nearly 600 yards. Stayed upright when most of his teammates were horizontal.
And yet, Kentucky lost both games. The usual culprits. Defense. Depth. The SEC.
Now he goes on the road against an Auburn team that hasn’t allowed more than 24 points to anyone this season. That includes Georgia, Oklahoma, Missouri and Arkansas. Auburn’s defense doesn’t bend or break. It barely blinks.
Good luck, kid.
It feels like a lose-lose situation, with travel.
Kentucky’s last win over Auburn came in 2009. Let’s put it this way. I’m writing this column on an iPad. The last time Kentucky beat Auburn, there were was no such thing as an iPad.
Mark Stoops is 0-for-3 against Auburn. Which is better than 0-for-19, but in the same genre.
A win would help. It might soothe things. Keep people from logging on to message boards and typing in ALL CAPS. Maybe they’d just type in Some Caps.
But another loss? I don’t know. Maybe just more of the same. So many Kentucky fans I encounter are just numb. They’re not spitting mad. They appreciate what Stoops has done. And he hasn’t antagonized the fan base like John Calipari sometimes did. He sincerely wants to succeed, to a great degree for them.
But even he seems to know the odds he’s up against.
He didn’t sound rattled Monday. He sounded resigned. He talked about building a roster year-to-year. About injuries. About secondary depth. About how this team — with 55 new players — isn’t a finished product, and maybe can’t be.
He wasn’t angry. He was pragmatic. You know, one stage before defiance and one after frustration.
He’s dealing with injuries. The secondary is depleted. The running back is hurt. The schedule is cruel.
“You just hope you don’t have to patch all the holes,” he said.
Which is a little like saying, “You just hope this ship reaches shore before it hits the bottom.”
There’s still time. There’s always time to get to shore.
But DraftKings is giving better odds on the bottom.
One win can still spark something. This team hasn’t quit. It’s shown flashes. A little life on offense lately. A little backbone on defense two weeks ago. But “almost” doesn’t stop the countdown.
Stoops has built a career at Kentucky. A good one. A long one. He dragged the program to relevance.
But now it’s spun sideways on him, and he’s running out of room to straighten it out.
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