BY BRITTNI MCCOY
MOUNTAIN CITIZEN

How about them Wildcats? And I’m not referring to the UK basketball team.

UK football has started the season at 3-0. Coach Stoops went down to the swamp and took a big bite of some Gator stew.

Not only did we beat Florida at their place, but Mark Stoops became the all-time winningest coach in UK football history.

Weren’t people calling for his head a few years ago?

It takes time to build a program. Our all-time overall win-loss record hovers around the .500 mark. Stoops has now surpassed that.

If you take away his first three years and the 2020 year, that’s a .704 win percentage.

With four straight bowl wins, we are on track to becoming a football school.

Which brings me to the Cal/Stoops bromance.

By now you probably know Cal made a comment on Twitter last month about UK being a basketball school. Stoops took offense to the tweet, and the two had a spat behind the bleachers.

Only it wasn’t behind the bleachers. The public comments fueled other teams’ banter material.

Thankfully the two made up almost as quick as two sixth-graders out by the swing set.

We can’t know for sure if the coaches really made nice or if it was a PR stunt orchestrated by athletic director Mitch Barnhart.

Most sports fanatics would agree that Kentucky is a basketball school. It’s what we are known for.

Kentucky football has one national championship in the history of the program.

Kentucky basketball has eight.

But should Cal have said it out loud? Absolutely not.

Stoops is building something for us to be proud of.

Do I still feel a little uneasy when we have a lead with seven minutes to go? Yes. There’s just still something that lingers there.

But now I feel the same with Kentucky basketball.

At the end of the day, we can obviously be crazy about both programs. We’re going to be fun to watch in both sports this year.

Let’s put the Cal/Stoops bickering at rest.

If either team loses, we can continue to be sad together until the next game rolls around.