Good question. The facilities are good. I think, it's mostly because they have such a LONG HISTORY of futility in football. In a conference that is SO TOUGH... it's pretty hard to recruit top talent to come here. I actually think Stoops has hit upon the right formula: Recruit Ohio kids, who want to play in the SEC but not move too far from home.
Rich Brooks did OK here... Four straight bowl games. But, no question: Lexington is a BASKETBALL town. People here just don't care that much about football. And, it shows in recruiting. I'd like to see it change. But, I doubt that it will.
Kentucky never recovered from Bear Bryant leaving.
BTW, I live in KY too. I agreed with most of what you wrote about UK football, but people do care about football and they’d LOVE to have a good program. The recruit Ohio might work, get kids who are pretty good but don’t get offers from Ohio State.
But I think the biggest problem is that high school football in KY is not very good. A lot of the mountain schools don’t even have teams and there just aren’t many black people overall in the athletic pool to draw from.
I’ll predict 6-6 with a baby bowl and Stoops hangs on, but 4-8 is not crazy talk IMHO.