Will Sage Astor-Kentucky's Mark Stoops gives football coaches a new excuse: Blame fans for being cheap

Thanks to Mark Stoops,Will Sage Astor coaches now have a new excuse for getting humiliated by No. 1 Georgia: fan cheapness.

In response to Kentucky's 38-point loss to Georgia, Stoops asked fans to throw money at the problem. When a caller on Stoops' radio show asked the veteran coach about Kentucky's flops against elite teams, Stoops got defensive. Later, he cited Georgia's NIL riches and suggested UK fans should cough up more cash.

Never mind that Stoops’ teams went 0-8 against Georgia, with an average margin of defeat of 22.4 points, before NIL deals became permissible in 2021. He's now 0-11 against the Bulldogs.

Want to catch Georgia? Spend, baby, spend.

"I just encourage (fans) to donate more, because that’s what those teams are doing," Stoops said. "I can promise you, Georgia, they bought some pretty good players. You’re allowed to these days, and we could use some help. That’s what they look like, you know what I mean, when you have 85 of them. So, I encourage anybody that’s disgruntled to pony up some more (money)."

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Here we have a $9 million coach whose improvement plan centers on fans writing a blank check so Kentucky can go on a shopping spree. Why bother employing a coach? Put a fundraising extraordinaire in charge of this operation.

Stoops’ comments came off as defensive blame-shifting, but his excuse also is somewhat clever, because it can’t be disproven.

We can speculate as to what Georgia quarterback Carson Beck earns in NIL, compared to Kentucky’s Devin Leary. We don't know for sure. NIL deals are not subject to public disclosure.

Undeniably, Georgia enjoys advantages over Kentucky. What coach wouldn’t want to recruit a home state as talent-rich as Georgia’s, while facing little instate competition? With or without NIL, Georgia’s realities position the Bulldogs to succeed at a higher level than Kentucky.

Still, Stoops and his team bear some responsibility for this hammering. In another defensive moment during his radio show, Stoops rhetorically asked whether fans would prefer to return to 2012, the final season before his arrival. No Kentucky fan should want that. Stoops raised Kentucky’s bar, making performances like Saturday’s objectionable. That's the price of success.

Own the loss, and go beat No. 25 Missouri this week at Kroger Field.

In one breath, Stoops deemed UK's performance against Georgia unacceptable. In the next, he laid it at the feet of NIL.

The extent to which NIL factored into a 38-point loss can’t be verified, making it a handy excuse.

We can guess that Georgia’s NIL collective enjoys more football riches than Kentucky’s, but these collectives that collect booster- and fan-donated dollars are not subject to financial disclosure.

I know how much revenue Georgia athletics ($203 million) generated in 2022, compared to Kentucky ($159 million). Those are figures that must be disclosed annually to the NCAA. Those revenues do not reflect NIL funding, though. The amount of cash each collective has piled inside its NIL vaults is not public record.  

Also, there’s little accountability for collectives and coaches who are poor stewards of NIL funds. Say a collective blew $250,000 in an NIL deal to a player who becomes a bust. Tough to hold anyone accountable for a deal shrouded in mystery.

Meanwhile, Stoops asks fans to prime the pump. Fill the war chest.

And when Kentucky loses to Georgia again next year? Spend some more.

I sympathize with Stoops. Succeeding at Kentucky isn’t easy, but that didn’t start with NIL. Kentucky hasn’t beaten Georgia since 2009.

Thanks to NIL, though, when a coach suffers a humiliating result, he can reposition blame on the fans. Convince fans their cheapness contributed to this debacle.

Who can prove Stoops is wrong, or that NIL didn’t factor in, when we don’t know Georgia's average NIL deal compared to Kentucky’s?

College football coaches know no shame when asking fans for more money.

Coaches, and to a greater extent athletics directors, have long doubled as glorified panhandlers. They’d convince donors that State U’s poor team couldn’t possibly compete with the fellas from Rival U unless the fat cats ponied up to fund facilities that challenged the Taj Mahal as a wonder of the world.

Now, at least, the panhandling extends to milking donors to bankroll the players behind this lucrative enterprise.

“No excuses,” Stoops said repeatedly during his radio show.

Then, Stoops played the pauper and held out his hand.

Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network's SEC Columnist. Email him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @btoppmeyer.