Article on Mullen and MSU..............

[Liverpooldawg]

from an outside perspective. Good read. This stuff is spot on.

https://kentucky.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1815662

[Johnson85]

from an outside perspective. Good read. This stuff is spot on.

https://kentucky.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1815662

Pretty good. Kind of surprised in all that talk about Mullen he didn't mention winning the games you're supposed to win and on a related note, going undefeated against UK.

[sayit]

The main point of that article is exactly what KY fans told us while visiting there last October as #1..."we're pulling for you guys from here on out because you give us hope that we can get there too".

[sayit]

...I'd call the Orange Bowl a "big bowl" though.

[CadaverDawg]

...I'd call the Orange Bowl a "big bowl" though.

Yep, and we HAVE won the West...article said we had not. Gator Bowl is a big bowl too, and we've been to 2 of those recently.

Not surprised that an article talking about how shitty our history is, would be linked here by Liverpool. It does say a lot about how far we've come though. Pretty good read, but Kentucky still thinks they are much closer to us than they really are in terms of modern day football. They wouldn't be nearly as pumped with their progress if they weren't playing in a shitty Eastern division since Stoops arrived. Hell, what would Stoops record be in the West?

[Liverpooldawg]

You HAVE to look at our history to understand just exactly what Dan Mullen has done and is doing here. When you are a program like us you have to compete against your history, and beat it in a sustained fashion, before you can consistently compete at the level we all want. Mullen is almost there. We are certainly closer than we have ever been in the modern era.

[thf24]

The main point of that article is exactly what KY fans told us while visiting there last October as #1..."we're pulling for you guys from here on out because you give us hope that we can get there too".

I'm happy we can provide them with that hope, but our circumstances aren't exactly comparable. While we both suffer from sub-par lower level coaching in much of our recruiting backyards, we tend to have a lot more athletes with a lot of raw talent than they do. Then they've got Louisville right next door and Tennessee and Ohio State, among others, on the fringes of their territory dipping into what's already slim pickings. Mullen has shown that a crucial component to elevating a program is to build your base on homegrown talent, and I don't think that's a consistently viable option for them at the present time.

[blacklistedbully]

...I'd call the Orange Bowl a "big bowl" though.

And we have won the SEC West, just not recently, and only once.

[Taog Redloh]

That's about the most accurate article I've ever seen written about us.

[ShotgunDawg]

Yep, and we HAVE won the West...article said we had not. Gator Bowl is a big bowl too, and we've been to 2 of those recently.

Not surprised that an article talking about how shitty our history is, would be linked here by Liverpool. It does say a lot about how far we've come though. Pretty good read, but Kentucky still thinks they are much closer to us than they really are in terms of modern day football. They wouldn't be nearly as pumped with their progress if they weren't playing in a shitty Eastern division since Stoops arrived. Hell, what would Stoops record be in the West?

I'm with you. The author had some good points, but didn't do the necessary research to make a great comparison.

It's amazing how much we go under the radar. When people write articles on us, they don't even realize what we've accomplished

[sleepy dawg]

You HAVE to look at our history to understand just exactly what Dan Mullen has done and is doing here. When you are a program like us you have to compete against your history, and beat it in a sustained fashion, before you can consistently compete at the level we all want. Mullen is almost there. We are certainly closer than we have ever been in the modern era.

I agree completely, and that's the way I've viewed Mullen and why I've supported him so much. The foundation he has laid is one that can sustain long term success with gradual improvement. We were David in a whole land of Goliaths. That land still exists, but we're fighting real damn hard. We must stay the course.

[Jack Lambert]

Bo would call that guy racist because he usd the term "Blue Collar"

[SheltonChoked]

The big thing UK has going for it is Conference. Stoops has done well lately recruiting Northern players that want to play for the SEC. Getting the 2nd tier players from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, etc. is the key for them.

And as long as they are our permanent cross division foe, I hope they fail.

[godlluB]

We won't really be on par with Kentucky until we spend millions of dollars to make our football stadium smaller.

[Jack Lambert]

We won't really be on par with Kentucky until we spend millions of dollars to make our football stadium smaller.

Did they make thier stadium smaller?

[Johnson85]

I'm happy we can provide them with that hope, but our circumstances aren't exactly comparable. While we both suffer from sub-par lower level coaching in much of our recruiting backyards, we tend to have a lot more athletes with a lot of raw talent than they do. Then they've got Louisville right next door and Tennessee and Ohio State, among others, on the fringes of their territory dipping into what's already slim pickings. Mullen has shown that a crucial component to elevating a program is to build your base on homegrown talent, and I don't think that's a consistently viable option for them at the present time.

They don't have as much home grown talent, but they have a much easier hill to climb. To get where they can consistently go to bowls, they just need to go 3-0 against their nonUL OOC opponents, beat Vandy, and then get two out of their remaining games. It won't always be this way, but lately there have rarely been more than two or three good teams in the east. Should be reasonably easy to find two wins between their east opponents and UL. And once they are good enough to do that, it's not a huge leap to get from bowl eligibility to 3rd in the East. Again, it will change at some point in the future, but the East has not had more than two good teams in a while. Whereas in the West there was a huge gulf between being good enough to get bowl eligible and getting into the top 3 (generally requires a top 15 type team), once you're good enough in the East to win a few games, you are more or less a threat to everybody there. Pinkel has taken two teams to the SEC championship game that probably would not have finished in the top three in the west in their respective years. He should get a lot of credit for winning the key games without a ton of talent, but if he had had to play an SECW schedule, the talent disparity would have usually been so great when he was playing the top two or three teams in the division that coaching wouldn't be enough to overcome it.

[maroonmania]

You HAVE to look at our history to understand just exactly what Dan Mullen has done and is doing here. When you are a program like us you have to compete against your history, and beat it in a sustained fashion, before you can consistently compete at the level we all want. Mullen is almost there. We are certainly closer than we have ever been in the modern era.

2 points to that:

1. Yes, our history is pretty miserable but until Mullen came along with a competent administration behind him we had never really TRIED to win. Not with the dollars and organization you have to have to truly compete big time. We've come a LONG way in this area.

2. The modern SEC has made it much easier for us to win more games than we could 10+ years ago going all the way back. I say that because the gap between SEC teams and our normal OOC opponents is WAY bigger than it was in the past. We pretty much take our 4 OOC games as automatic wins these days (that will change starting next year when we have to start playing a P5 team) but it wasn't that way back in the day. It used to be pretty much ALL our games were loseable but the rising tide of the SEC has helped with that tremendously. I mean 2 of the 5 bowls we've been to under Mullen were with a 2-6 SEC record.

Mullen deserves a TON of credit for what he has done for our program, don't misunderstant that, BUT its easier to win at a level to make bowl games at MSU now than it ever was in our past. Now getting to #1 for 5 weeks, that was just an incredible feat last year that may never happen again. Not only do you have to play incredible ball but you need other elite programs to lose or not look very impressive and that happened for us.

[Barkman Turner Overdrive]

It read like three page backhanded complement.

[godlluB]

Did they make thier stadium smaller?

Yes. They just completed a $120 million dollar renovation that reduced seating from over 67,000 to 61,000.

http://www.ukathletics.com/page/facilities-commonwealth-stadium

"The stadium is currently undergoing a $120 million renovation. The renovation includes a new press box, loge box seats, club seats, recruiting room, suites, concourses, bathrooms, lights and exterior facade while reducing capacity to around 61,000. The project is expected to be completed by the start of the 2015 season."