Mark Stoops replacing Joker Phillips at Kentucky

New Kentucky offensive coordinator Neal Brown’s 5,000-plus Twitter followers were probably mostly composed of Texas Tech fans, seeing as that was his previous employer. So when he flipped the switch to Big Blue to send out this ...

... we also got to enjoy rebranded classics like the tweet up top. One thing is for certain: Neal Brown is a sports fan.

Kentucky did not fare nearly as well, ranking no higher than 114th in any of those categories. That led to head coach Joker Phillips being fired before the season was out, and Florida St. Seminoles defensive coordinator Mark Stoops being hired as the new Wildcats head coach.

Now that he’s taken the job as head coach at Kentucky, former Florida State defensive coordinator Mark Stoops is reportedly wasting no time trying to put together his coaching staff:

Coley has been the offensive coordinator at Florida State since 2010, but Jimbo Fisher recently announced that he would be hiring a new coach for that position.

Update: Confirmed by Kentucky. Here’s Stoops on the move:

Florida State defensive coordinator Mark Stoops will replace Joker Phillips as the head coach at Kentucky, according to Matt Jones. He’s the brother of Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops and defensive coordinator Mike Stoops and has never been a head coach before -- other than Bob’s stint at Florida, Mark becomes the SEC’s first real taste of the Stoops family.

The Wildcats are searching for a new head coach to replace Joker Phillips, who went 13-24 in his time with Kentucky. Phillips and the Wildcats finished the 2012 season last in the SEC East with an 0-8 conference record and 2-10 mark overall. It was the first time since 2000 that Kentucky went winless in conference play.

Before coming to Florida State, Stoops was defensive coordinator at Arizona from 2004-2009.

Jones has been in charge for a 7-3 season and had the Bearcats in line for a share of a second-consecutive Big East Championship after starting the year 5-0. Tucker reports that the job has been offered to Jones, but he has not accepted or declined the offer yet. Both teams still have work to do this season, with Jones’ Cincinnati squad still having two games and a potential bowl, while Joker Phillips remains in charge for one more game at Kentucky.

The 44-year-old Jones is 48-27 between Central Michigan and Cincinnati. He would be the third-consecutive coach to leave Cincinnati after a successful season but before a bowl: In 2004, Mark Dantonio left for Michigan State after a 7-5 season but before the team’s International Bowl, which was eventually coached by Brian Kelly. Kelly later left Cincinnati after a 12-0 regular season in 2009, allowing Jones to take the Bearcats’ job.

“Some of you won’t want to hear this,” Tucker wrote, “but Phil Fulmer, although not atop the list, is in play for the UK opening.”

Fulmer has had kind words to say about the Kentucky program in recent weeks. More than anything, he seemed convinced of the school’s potential to field a competitive SEC football team.

At this point, we can probably say with confidence that Dykes is on the list. He was previously reported as a candidate by Pat Forde, along with Dirk Koetter, Brent Pease and Neal Brown. Brown, a Texas Tech assistant, might or might not have been contacted by the Cats. Either way, that’s a lot of offense in that list of names, and Dykes’ LA Tech teams can certainly produce it: the Bulldogs currently top the country in yards per game.

Smart is the first defensive man to be connected with the coaching search. The 2009 assistant coach of the year, he’s been mentioned in pretty much every SEC coaching hunt over the past three or four years. For obvious reasons, even though Saban’s coaching tree has produced quite mixed results so far.

While the list of coaches Kentucky’s reportedly considering is quite sensible, the Cats have bought themselves plenty of time to make their next choice by announcing Joker Phillips’ firing early in the process. So why not take a little trip down WHOA HEY WHOA TOO FAR TOO FAST WHY NOT JIM ZORN HE’S AVAILABLE

Check the national college football scoreboard right here, and look through SB Nation’s many excellent college football blogs to find your team’s community.

2012 offered very, very few signs of hope for the future, as one of the SEC’s worst teams lost more games, one of them to the Sun Belt’s Western Kentucky and another to Louisville, which has definitively claimed the title of the state’s best football team and program. That UK had to deny just four games into the season a rumor that Phillips had resigned was not a good sign.

Speaking of WKU, Willie Taggart’s name will surely emerge as a potential replacement. I recommend Willie Taggart for like every job, but to retool one of his players’ description of UK, he’s supposed to be SEC. Taggart coached under Jim Harbaugh at Stanford and has used an offense heavy on motions and power to compete (from 2-10 to 7-5, currently 6-3) despite having some of the country’s thinnest resources.

Phillips hasn’t posted a winning season at Kentucky, but did lead the program to a Compass Bowl berth in 2010. His overall record with the Wildcats is now 12-23, with just four of those wins coming in SEC play. UK is 4-19 in conference under Phillips, who started his coaching career with the program as a graduate assistant in 1988.

In response to the news, Phillips issued a statement: