Joker to be Florida’s new WR coach
While excitement for Kentucky football is through the roof due to its new coach, the program’s old coach, Joker Phillips, may have already found another home. According to Pete Roussel of CoachingSearch.com, Florida’s Will Muschamp may hire Joker as a wide receivers coach.
Best wishes to the former Cat.
UPDATE: The ever-reliable footballscoop.com has confirmed the rumor and says that there will be an announcement later this week and that Joker will start working immediately.
59 Comments for Joker to be Florida’s new WR coach
i like the guy…i really do…but could there be any more irony to him being a wide receiver coach after these past two years?
FYI, M. Tyler, looks like Alex Poythress dropped twitter too.
If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em.
1/ I was thinking exactly the same thing.
Maybe I am wrong, but doesn’t any money that Joker makes from coaching, subtract from his buy out of the years left on his contract? If so, I would think he would be very choosey as to what job he took. If I were him, I would take a year off to recharge.
He’s actually in a better situation if the Florida rumor is true.
Good for him. He’ll win more rings there than Kentucky ever will.
Gonna be great to come back and beat the Kentucky Cats under Stoops! Great for Joker! No stress!! Give something for Matt to gripe about! Joker beats stoops in 2013!
Hope it’s true. I wish the best for him. He’s a class act. Just wasn’t ready to be head coach.
good luck to Joker wherever he lands. I’d prefer he stay out of conference but that would be a fantastic job for Joker.
Did Mary Jo Perino transfer to a station in Gainesville or something?
I used to think that Tubby Smith was the classiest ex coach we ever had. But after hearing Jokers parting statements, I now think that he tops even Tubby!
Good for Joker! Good for UK if it saves us money!
Cream always comes to the top. Joker will be fine!
What in the hell was florida thinking?
Actually, cream isn’t the only thing that comes to the top. Look at the last three years of Joker. Sometimes that stuff on the top is actually chunks of soured, spoiled milk that NO ONE should drink or it will make them sick. I started feeling better yesterday when Stoops took the stage.
Looks like their wide receivers won’t be catching any passes now. Feel the wrath of joker!!!! #rise
Congrats to Coach Phillips!
Wish him nothing but success…except when they play UK of course.
12 – Its sad, but Tubby has put together a better team at Minnesota this year than CAL has assembled at UK. Im still glad that CAL is our coach, but he could learn a few things from Tubby.
Great for Joker!! Really happy he is going to FL. This means he lands on his feet at a high profile program so that he can begin the climb again.
‘Grats to Joker. If we could have collective amnesia about the past few years, I’d take him as our WR coach. People forget, but he was quite good at it. WR was our strongest position thanks to the combination of recruiting unheralded but high-ceiling players and coaching them up to be great players (Stevie Johnson, Randall Cobb, Keenan Burton, etc.).
Well, this seals it…UL WILL beat Fla.
Good for Joker. Hope he gets to help coach their bowl game. Another reason to cheer on FL to beat Louisville.
You smoking Crack?
Irony is going 0-8 in the sec and still somehow someway ending up coaching in the sugar bowl.
Sad But True, your ignorance is astounding. This is an all freshmen team. This is the system under Cal, and I think he has EARNED some leeway. 2 Final Fours in 3 years, and… a Title. (Not to mention as close to another Final Four next year as you can get a year in advance). Step back and think about the situation. Many have been spoiled with immediate success, and THAT is precisely the reason everybody in the country has been so amazed at what Cal has done these last 3 years, and why he has picked up yet another National Coach of the Year.
If you want “lessons from Tubby”, then take one for yourself and remember “to not get too high, nor get too low.”.
Congrats Joker!
Matt ought to force profiles on here to include the ages of the posters just so wed can get an idea of how much experience (=wisdom) some of these posters on here might have.
Good for you Joker! Just glad it wasn’t Louisville! GO CATS!!!
I wonder if Joker is gonna spend most of practice working on bubble screens…
I think Joker’s pretty well tied in to the Georgis high school coaches and Florida recruits there so that could work pretty well for the Florida recruiting effort.
This says he will start immediately. That means Louisville now has a chance to beat Florida. No, wait, this is Florida. Not even Joker could mess that up.
At least he’s going someplace warm. I truly wish him the best.
Think it’s great really like Joker !!!! Plus looks like Joker will get to BEAT LOUISVILLE this year after all !!!!!
Florida’s screen game is going to be on point
To all the people making jokes about Joker’s ability to coach wide receivers, keep in mind that when he was Wide Receivers coach from 2003-2009 Joker developed Stevie Johnson, Keenan Burton, Glenn Holt, Randall Cobb, Chris Matthews, Jacob Tamme (came in as WR, Joker sent to TE) and Larod King. All of which were All Sec and/or played/are playing in the NFL.
If he can do that with 3 star talent, I think he will be fine with 4 and 5 star talent. I’m not quite sure you guys fully understand the difference in coaching a position and coaching a team. When you are a Head Coach, you are only as good as the coaches you surround yourself with, and the biggest fault of Joker was not his coaching ability, but his ability to hire a competent staff.
I actually look forward to the FL WR’s showing Joker some love next year after the Gators hang the typical 40-50 point beatdown of UK at Commonwealth (a la FSU defense giving Stoops a gatorade bath after ACC Championship). Nice presser by Stoops at Nutter yesterday… now reality will rear its ugly head.
You all do realize that Florida’s new Offensive Coordinator runs the option, right?
Where’s the non-compete clause in his contract? ha
Any truth to the rumor that Florida’s wide receivers have all canceled their twitter accounts in an attempt to not get blown up by upset Gator fans at the lackluster WR play on the horizon?
I’m so happy for Joker, and his family. May God bless all their endeavors,
at Florida, and their whole lives. It’s such a relief to hear this! I’m glad we
have a new coach and new hope for our football program, but I have
always wished Joker well.
Good for him. At least at Florida he’ll actually win something once in a while.
#5) I’m pretty sure Joker gets the full buyout whether he takes another job. Usually only assistant coaches with buyouts have the clause you’re talking about (that’s how it was with Dooley and his assistants at UT). However, when there is such a provision, it usually also requires the coach to make a good faith effort to get another job. So he couldn’t just “take a year off” and still collect the full buyout if he was offered a job.
Flash forward from the crystal ball. 2015 … “footballscoop.com reports that former UK Head Coach Mark Stoops accepts Defensive Coordinator position at Oklahoma to join his brother. Stoops let go after 3 years of futility and unfulfilled promises of facilities upgrades at UK.”
19, you are kidding, aren’t you?
Thats great news
What better way to avenge your firing and the fans who wanted you gone, than to beat them and their team on a consistent, yearly basis.
Would have prefered he go out of conference. Hate to root against a class act but…. he chose it. So good luck to him except once a year.
Maybe not having Minter hanging around his neck will unencumber him to pass on to others what he knows about the game. Both sides got through it without blood on the floor.
What better way to avenge your firing and the fans who wanted you gone, than to beat them and their team on a consistent, yearly basis.
And when he does that, I guess he’ll have his revenge. But he’s the wide receivers coach, not HC. So it will be Muschamp taking the credit/blame, not Joker.
Unless, of course, you held Joker blameless for the last three seasons and just blamed the Coordinators and position coaches…in which case why did we even have Joker?
Will UK still be on the hook for the reminder of his contract????
I’m sure each Florida dropped whatever they were holding when they heard the news.
Looks like Joker might get the last laugh.
I understand this is Joker’s “specialty” when it comes to coaching football but, seriously, didn’t Florida see how completely inept our WRs have been the past 2 years?? It’s not that they couldn’t get open, they couldn’t catch the ball!!
WR play SHOULD have been a strength of UK football given Joker’s background but, instead, it was just the opposite.
I wish Joker the best and he’s probably in a pretty good position but this made me laugh a bit when I read it…
Now, if they had hired him as “Punter’s Coach” I would have understood; we’re damn good at punting!!!
53 – If getting the last laugh means you just went from a head coach to a position coach then he can laugh all he wants. I know he’s now a part of a much better team but getting demoted never feels good.
#55 The Towel Boy position at UF is better than the Head Coach position at UK…
I never heard the full details on this Mary Jo Perino/Joker affair. Was this ever substantiated? What are the facts behind this story?
i will have a bcs ring before you all will so i hope you all can get one so thanks for firing me
…sounds about right.