It's Kentucky vs The World: After Thinking It Over, I'm Here To Announce I'm Now All In On Mark Pope Being The Right Guy For Kentucky

A lot of emotion can happen the moment your school, the team you live and die with, makes a surprise hiring. You don't know how to react. Sometimes you overreact. That may have been me last night out of simple confusion. But then I did the logical stuff. I held a Twitter spaces, I corrected Rico about stats on said Twitter spaces, I talked to people and my announcement is simple.

That's right. Mark Pope is the guy. Do I care he hasn't won a Tournament game? Well, yeah, but also no. Calipari has only won one in the same 4-year timeframe he was at BYU (not counting the 2020 cancellation). Pope has finished higher than Calipari on KenPom 3 of the 5 years. He's an offensive genius. 

That'll do! 

Many are saying Mark Pope is a dork. Well:

You know what? He's our fucking dork now. Hell, he's been our dork since he won a title in 1996. If he wins games, I'll do that same song like Mark Pope. That's all that matters. Winning. You know what else matters? Kentucky. That's the only thing that matters. I don't give a shit what fans of other teams think. I don't give a shit what most people think. I care about if Mark Pope can win games at Kentucky. He has a 5-year deal. 

I know there are other concerns. Can he recruit? Buddy, he was bringing in decent talent at BYU. Do you know how hard it is to recruit to BYU? No one wants to go to BYU! But I'll soak for a March win. I'll cut out dancing for a March win. I'll do some of the BYU rules for wins in March. Every single coach at Kentucky was able to bring recruits there - even Billy Gillispie! If he can recruit, surely Mark Pope can too. 

But ultimately I remembered he's now our guy. He's the guy I want to see win every single fucking game. He's the guy with the keys to the kingdom. He's the guy that will either send Mitch Barnhart to a horse farm or have him raise a title. I still hate how Mitch ran the search and from everything reported basically did this on his own because he felt safe with Mark. We can hate Mitch and rally for Mark. That's the plan. 

So someone point me in the direction of where the hell to buy a pope hat. I need one, preferably in denim or this design. 

Al Bello. Getty Images.

John Biever. Getty Images.

Not to mention I can use EuroTrip (underrated) clips and gifs now 

Now let's go win some goddamn games.