[Auburn]

Now that JH has "Hurleyed" Corbin ,  let's talk about who will be the Mark Pope hire. I'm gonna go out on a bit of a limb and say Steven L. Bird will take over the reins of the Corbin head man. Like Pope, who led UK to a title in '96, Bird led the Hounds to the '76 AA state title over Mayfield. Steve is a Corbin legend, has a NFL resume, and has a long history as assistant coach, with stops  at Kentucky, Tennessee, EKU, Pitt, West Virginia, Tulane, Middle Tennessee, Kent State, Bowling Green, South Florida, and South Carolina State, where he has been for the past 11 years. On the down side, Bird was a classmate of the evil Cox.

 Steve would be a fine choice, for the short term. He will be 64 in October and I think Corbin needs to look for someone younger for the future. I could see them bringing in Steve for the next couple or three years, until the human obstacles to Haddix' return are removed and then we'll be hearing the Haddix talk again. If not Bird, who are some of the other "Pope" candidates?

 And truth be told, until Hurley and UCONN's last two seasons, a coach and a program that are at the apex of college basketball and possibly all of major college athletics as a whole (the only coach and program standing on back to back national titles), Hurley was a "Pope Hire".

Counting the last two years at UConn, his overall win % is 64% (in high school football terms, a tad better than 6-4 but not quite 7-3). Prior to the last two seasons, he had only had 2 NCAA tourney wins in only four appearances. 

The UK coaching search epitomizes how hard it is to snag coaches that are already at good/great programs to leave for another one, and we are talking about life/family/generational changing money here- of which coaching Kentucky High School Football is not.