Let\u2019s get this out of the way first: The Dark Knight is the best superhero movie ever made. This isn\u2019t even controversial, right? Don\u2019t tell me you\u2019re more of a Marvel fan. Avengers: End Game? Please. That is just sappy. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse? Marketing gimmick. People will be dressing as Heath Ledger\u2019s Joker for Halloween for all eternity. But, more to the point, the movie\u2019s other villain, Harvey Dent (AKA Two-Face), has a poignant message that should resonate with all college coaches, specifically Kentucky\u2019s Mark Stoops at the moment.<\/p>\n
The profession of college coaching can be absolutely brutal. It may not be quite as bad as the life of an NBA coach, where people like former Kentucky assistant Dwane Casey can win Coach of the Year only to be rewarded by their franchise with a prompt firing. But still, college athletics lives by the \u201cWhat have you done for me lately?\u201d creed, perhaps to a fault. It makes it tough for anyone to find a long-term home.<\/p>\n
This is where Harvey Dent\u2019s sage words<\/a> come in. In one of the most famous lines from The Dark Knight, Dent, the admirable district attorney before his transformation into the villainous Two-Face, explains, \u201cYou either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.\u201d<\/p>\n Or, to tweak this in advice so that it applies to coaching, \u201cYou either retire a hero, or coach long enough to see yourself become the villain.\u201d <\/p>\n This is certainly true for Mark Stoops. <\/p>\n Stoops\u2019 swift fall from the rooftop<\/p>\n Just a few short years ago, there was a genuine debate about whether or not Stoops, the only coach to lead Kentucky to two 10-win seasons, deserves a statue on campus. He arguably has had more success than anyone not named Bear Bryant as Kentucky\u2019s football coach in program history.<\/p>\n Stoops could have retired (or bolted to Texas A&M in the middle of the night), and while Big Blue Nation may have been caught off guard, he could have returned to Kroger Field one day on a golden chariot hoisted by former players and fans alike. He will still likely get that deserving homecoming one day, but that spectacle seems like a far-fetched superhero movie right now.<\/p>\n Blame NIL, the transfer portal, a few recruiting whiffs, or whatever you want, but something changed in the last couple of years. This is no place to explore the why behind the fall, only to say something bad pushed Stoops out of a window, and Batman is nowhere around to catch him.<\/p>\n