Don't mess with Mark Stoops and his letters. (Photo: @TheHerd; Hat tip to Nation of Blue)
Recruiting in college football may be the most competitive industry in the country. Teams will do everything in their power to convince a 17 or 18-year-old to come play football for them, and not their competitors. Anything that can give a team an edge towards wooing a talented high-schooler to play for them is worth it in the long run. Kentucky's new football head coach Mark Stoops fancies himself a good recruiter, and other than the stereotypical visits and phone calls to recruits, Stoops has become famous for sending letters. Yes, every coach sends letters to recruits but Stoops sends dozens – or hundreds, in some cases – to the recruits he's after. Every letter is handwritten, by the way.
Other coaches use the letter swarm technique, like Alabama who sent a recruit 105 letters, but ESPN Radio host Colin Cowherd chose to single out Stoops and his letter-writing campaigns on his radio show. Cowherd thinks that the Post Office is worthless and that high school kids only have the mental capacity to read things written on screens, probably. While the letters can be seen as a bit much, I'm not sure what Cowherd's problem is with the overloading of recruits with letters, as he himself once directed his fans to overload and crash a plucky little sports blog called the Big Lead that had probably written something about his hair.
In response to Cowherd's motive questioning, Stoops and his UK staff awesomely sent the radio host 50 letters.
Cowherd can mock all he wants but the letter-bombardment seems to be working. The 115 letters that Stoops and his staff sent to QB recruit Drew Barker convinced him to sign with the Wildcats. He just happens to be a 4-star, Elite-11 QB and part of UK's No. 13 ranked recruiting class in ESPN's 2014 class rankings. Not bad for a basketball school. No word yet on what the letters say in them, though I can only presume that they list all of UK's recruiting commitments received under Stoops followed by, "Suck it."
